" 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


GIFT  OF 

Dr.  Gordon  Watkins 


SELECTIONS    AND    DOCUMENTS 
IN    ECONOMICS 


EDITED    BY 

WILLIAM    Z.   RIPLEY,   PH.D. 

PROFESSOR  OF  ECONOMICS,  HAKVAKIJ  UNIVERSITY 


SELECTIONS  AND  DOCUMENTS 
IN  ECONOMICS 

TRUSTS,  POOLS  AND  CORPORATIONS 

(Re-vised  Edition) 

By  William  Z.   Ripley,   Ph.D.,   Professor  of 

Political  Economy,  Harvard  University 

TRADE   UNIONISM  AND  LABOR 
PROBLEMS 

By  John  R.  Commons,  Professor  of  Political 
Economy,  University  of  Wisconsin 

SOCIOLOGY  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

By  Thomas   N.  Carver,   Ph.D.,   Professor  of 
Political  Economy,  Harvard  University 

SELECTED  READINGS  IN  PUBLIC 
FINANCE 

By  Charles  J.    Bullock,   Ph.D.,  Professor  of 
Economics,  Harvard  University 

RAILWAY  PROBLEMS  (Re-vised  Edition] 

By  William   Z.  Ripley,  Ph.D.,   Professor  of 
Political  Economy,  Harvard  University 

SELECTED  READINGS  IN  ECONOMICS 
By  Charles  J.  Bullock,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of 
Economics,  Harvard  University 

ECONOMIC  HISTORY  OF  THE   UNITED 
STATES.    1763-1860 

By  Guy  Stevens  Callender,  Professor  of  Political 
Economy,  Yale  University 

SELECTED  READINGS  IN  RURAL 
ECONOMICS 

By  Thomas   N.  Carver,   Ph.D.,  Professor  of 
Political  Economy,  Harvard  University 

READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

By  Alfred  Benedict  Wolfe,   Professor  of  Eco- 
nomics, University  of  Texas 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL 
PROBLEMS 


EDITED  WITH  AN   INTRODUCTION 
BY 

ALBERT  BENEDICT  WOLFE 

n  i 

PROFESSOR    OF    ECONOMICS    AND    SOCIOLOGY,  UNIVERSITY   OF   TEXAS 


GINN  AND  COMPANY 

BOSTON      •     NEW    YORK     •     CHICAGO      •     LONDON 
ATLANTA     •     DALLAS     •     COLUMBUS     -     SAN    FRANCISCO 


COPYRIGHT,  1916,  liY 
ALBERT  BENEDICT  WOLFE 


ALL    RIGHTS    RESERVED 

216.7 


(Cfte    fltbengum    gregg 

C.INX   AND  COMPANY  •   1'KII- 
1'RILTORS  •  liUS  1  (IN  •  U.S.A. 


PREFACE 

Some  years  ago,  while  teaching  economics  and  sociology  in 
Oberlin  College,  the  editor  of  this  book  became  impressed  with 
the  need  of  a  course  which  should  deal  with  the  more  basic  and 
deeply  rooted  problems  of  our  time  in  a  serious  and  critical,  but 
not  too  detailed  or  exhaustive,  manner.  Nearly  every  college 
and  university  was  offering  certain  specific  and  detailed  courses 
on  individual,  social,  or  economic  problems,  such  as  immigration, 
the  family,  poverty,  etc.  There  were  also  many  courses  dealing 
with  the  abnormal  side  of  society,  the  by-products  of  evolution, 
criminals  and  defectives,  and  methods  of  dealing  with  them  — 
charities  and  corrections,  criminology  and  penology,  and  the  like. 
Thus  there  was  much  indication  that  many  economics  or  sociology 
departments  were  devoting  a  very  considerable  part  of  their 
time  —  often  the  greater  part  of  it  —  to  a  more  or  less  super- 
ficial and  temporizing  study  of  what  we  may  call  for  brevity  the 
"down  and  out";  arid  this  to  the  neglect  of  serious  study  of  the 
underlying  historical,  economic,  psychological,  and  social  forces 
which  produce  in  every  normal  society  a  number  of  problems  of 
deepest  import  to  the  welfare  of  every  normal  individual  and  to 
the  future  direction  of  social  evolution.  Moreover,  where  only 
courses  on  specific  individual  problems  or  institutions  are  given, 
the  student  is  not  sure  to  emerge  from  his  sociological  study  with 
anything  even  remotely  resembling  a  perspective  upon  social  and 
economic  organization  and  process.  Of  a  broad,  general  survey, 
demanding  serious  though  not  technical  study  of  basic  social 
problems  of  vital  significance  to-day,  the  editor  could  find  few 
examples. 

During  the  past  three  or  four  years  there  has  been  much  in- 
dication of  changing  sentiment  with  regard  to  the  arrangement 
of  economics  and  sociology  courses.  The  incipient  demand  for  a 
general  introductory  course  in  social  science  in  the  freshman  year 


// 


vi  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

will  probably  bear  fruit  in  the  near  future.  The  conviction  that 
social  science  courses  should  be  definitely  graded  and  arranged 
in  logical  series  —  instead  of  allowing  the  student  to  step  from 
Economics  i  or  Sociology  A  directly  into  any  other  course,  not 
a  graduate  course,  in  the  department  —  is  growing  apace.  Akin 
to  this  conviction  is  the  belief,  upon  which  this  book  rests,  that 
it  is  better  for  a  student  whose  time  is  limited,  as  that  of  all 
students  is,  to  secure,  after  a  general  introductory  course  in  social 
science  or  after  the  elementary  course  in  economics  or  sociology, 
a  serious  survey  of  a  number  of  fundamental  but  concrete  social 
problems  than  it  is  for  him  to  attempt  an  intensive  study  of  one 
or  two,  to  the  neglect  of  all  the  rest. 

Some  most  important  socio-economic  problems  have  been  prac- 
tically neglected  by  both  economics  and  sociology  departments. 
Courses  in  one  aspect  of  the  population  problem  —  immigration— 
there  have  been.  Population  as  such  has  been  considered  chiefly 
by  the  economists,  and  by  them  principally  as  a  matter  of  the 
acceptance  or  nonacceptance  of  the  conclusions  of  Malthus,  or  as 
a  subject  incidental  to  the  theory  of  wages.  So  far  as  sociologists 
have  been  able  to  take  time  out  of  the  attractive  business  .of 
building  up  social  philosophies  to  consider  practical  issues,  they 
have  too  often  either  ignored  the  population  problem  entirely  or 
looked  upon  it  as  chiefly  a  matter  of  the  declining  birth  rate,  and 
usually  without  much  apparent  understanding  of  the  underlying 
economic  forces.  The  feminist  movement  and  the  woman  problem 
(so-called  for  lack  of  a  better  and  less  invidious  name)  have,  until 
very  recently,  either  been  touched  upon  with  some  hesitation  or 
calmly  ignored.  In  spite  of  the  patent  fact  that  they  involve 
many  of  the  most  fundamental  principles  of  ethics  and  eco- 
nomics and  are  freighted  with  profound  significance  for  the 
future  evolution  of  society  and  of  social  ethics,  they  have  not 
been  considered  worthy  the  dignity  of  serious  academic  attention. 
It  is  high  time  this  attitude  were  left  behind  in  every  educational 
institution.  There  have  been  numerous  courses  on  the  family,  but 
they  have  usually  treated  it,  mainly  if  not  entirely,  in  its  anthropo- 
logical  and  historical  aspects.  The  very  important  questions  in- 
volved in  matrimonial  ideals  and  practice,  and  in  divorce,  with 


PREFACE  vii 

their  attendant  present  social  unrest,  were,  until  a  comparatively 
recent  time,  left  largely  to  the  attention  of  those  reformers,  who, 
rightly  or  wrongly,  wish  to  see  the  amount  of  divorce  reduced,  at 
all  costs.  Race  problems,  where  not  approached  in  a  highly 
biased  and  totally  unscientific  spirit,  have  been  treated  chiefly 
from  the  standpoint  of  anthropology. 

Moreover,  there  have  been  practically  no  books,  either  for  the 
student  or  the  general  reader,  giving  under  one  cover  a  serious 
introduction  to  these  fundamental  problems  of  social  ethics  and 
constructive  sociology.  The  literature  in  each  one  of  these  specific 
fields  has  been  increasing  with  gratifying,  not  to  say  embarrassing, 
rapidity  in  the  past  few  years  ;  but  there  is  still  a  dearth  of  usable 
texts  treating  not  one  specific  problem  but  a  number. 

These  considerations,  more  particularly  that  it  was  regrettable 
that  so  many  promising  and  supposedly  educated  young  women 
and  young  men  should  go  out  from  college  with  little  or  no 
ordered  and  scientific  study  of  these  matters,  led  to  the  develop- 
ment of  a  full-year  course  in  social  problems.  The  present  book 
is  an  outgrowth  of  this  course.  It  is  the  editor's  hope  that  these 
readings  will  not  only  be  found  valuable  in  some  courses  in  general 
sociology  and  in  courses  devoted  entirely  to  individual  problems 
but  that  they  may  to  some  degree  stimulate  the  offering  of  more 
survey  courses  of  the  sort  here  suggested. 

The  selections  will  be  found  to  reflect  to  some  degree  a  his- 
torical method  of  attack.  But  for  the  limitations  of  space  this 
would  have  been  still  more  apparent.  It  is  not  always  necessary 
to  go  back  to  the  remotest  anthropological  or  even  historical 
beginnings  of  things,  but  some  knowledge  of  historical  develop- 
ment is  essential  to  the  proper  understanding  of  any  great  social 
problem  or  movement.  The  historical  attack,  moreover,  proves 
usually  more  interesting  to  the  student  than  a  purely  statistical 
and  critical  method. 

Effort  has  been  made  in  the  selections  to  present  diverse 
points  of  view.  It  is,  however,  not  possible  in  limited  space  to 
present  examples  of  all  the  shades  of  opinion,  nor  is  it  necessary. 
The  main  objects  are  to  stimulate  the  student  to  further  reading, 
to  furnish  well-chosen  material  for  classroom  discussion  —  no 


viii  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

other  method  of  instruction  begins  to  be  as  effective  —  and  above 
all  to  encourage  the  student  to  do  his  own  thinking.  Occasionally 
diametrically  opposing  views  are  placed  together,  but  no  effort 
has  been  made  to  construct  a  debaters'  handbook.  This  has 
rather  been  avoided.  The  debater's  habit  of  mind  is  not  conducive 
to  the  formation  of  balanced  judgments.  Where  so  many  con- 
flicting views  are  given,  it  goes  without  saying,  of  course,  that 
the  editor  does  not  hold  himself  responsible  for  any  of  them. 
The  references  at  the  end  of  each  Book  will  suggest  additional 
reading. 

More  stimulus  from  alert  minds,  more  pure  pleasure  in  teach- 
ing, than  he  has  reaped  from  the  course  in  social  problems,  the 
editor  does  not  expect  to  experience.  He  desires  to  express  his 
appreciation  to  students,  past  and  present,  for  the  very  essential 
part  they  have  played  in  the  development  of  the  ideas  upon 
which  this  book  rests.  It  is  planned  to  publish,  as  soon  as  may 
be,  a  fairly  comprehensive  text  on  these  problems,  which  will  be 
designed  as  a  companion  book  to  the  Readings. 

Kindest  acknowledgments  are  due  to  the  various  authors  and 
publishers  who  have  in  every  case  cordially  granted  permission 
for  the  use  of  their  work.  The  editor  is  further  indebted  to 
Professor  W.  Z.  Ripley  for  kindly  and  acute  criticism,  and 
especially  to  Mrs.  Clara  Snell  Wolfe  for  constant  helpful  criticism 

and  advice. 

A.  B.W. 

AUSTIN,  TEXAS 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION I 

BOOK  I.  PROBLEMS  OF  POPULATION 

CHAPTER 

I.  THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY 

Introduction 17 

1.  Statement  of  the  Subject;  Ratios  of  the  Increase  of  Popula- 

tion and  Food ;   Checks  to  Population,  by  T.  R.  Malthus        20 

2.  General  Deductions  from  the  Preceding  View  of  Society,  by 

T.  R.  Malthus 35 

3.  Of  our  Future  Prospects  respecting  the  Removal  or  Mitiga- 

tion of  the  Evils  arising  from  the  Principle  of  Popula- 
tion, by  T.  R.  Malthus 44 

II.  THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE 

Introduction 79 

4.  The  Decline  of  Human  Fertility  in  the  United  Kingdom  and 

Other  Countries  as  shown  by  Corrected  Birth  Rates,  by 
Arthur  Newsholme  and  T.  H.  C.  Stevenson     ....        80 

5.  The  Natural  Increase  of  Population 94 

6.  The  Significance  of  the  Effective  Desire  for  Offspring,  by 

John  Rae 96 

7.  The  Law  of  Population  based  upon  the  Opposition  between 

Individuation  and  Genesis,  by  Herbert  Spencer    .     .      .      100 

III.  SOCIALISM  AND  POPULATION 

Introduction 118 

8.  Prudential  Restraint  under  Socialism,  by  William  Thompson      1 1 8 

9.  The  Economic  Independence  of  Women  as  a  Check  to  Popu- 

lation, by  C.  L.  James 123 

10.  How  Secure  the  Exercise  of  Moral  Restraint  under  Socialism, 

by  T.  R.  Malthus 125 

11.  Private  Property  and  the  Prudential  Check,  by  Arthur  T. 

Hadley .127 

12.  The  Necessity  for  State  Pensions  for  Mothers,  by  Sidney 

Webb 131 

ix 


x  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

IV.  EUGENICS 

Introduction 135 

13.  The  Progress  of  Eugenics,  by  James  A.  Field     ....     135 

14.  The  Psycho-Physical  Elite  and  the  Economic  Elite,  by 

Achille  Loria       167 

1 5.  The  Social  Significance  of  Hereditary  Feeble-mindedness, 

by  H.  H.  Goddard 173 

V.  INFANT  MORTALITY 

Introduction 194 

1 6.  An  Approximation  of  the  Amount  of  Infant  Mortality  in 

the  World  at  Large,  by  Edward  Bunnell  Phelps     .     .     195 

1 7.  Infant  Mortality  and  its  Causes,  by  Edward  Bunnell  Phelps     199 

VI.  THE  ETHICS  OF  POPULATION  POLICIES  ;  NEO-MALTHUSIANISM 

1 8.  Population  or  Prosperity,  by  Frank  A.  Fetter      .     .     .     .     219 

19.  The  Bearing  of  the  Malthusian  Law  of  Population  upon 

Human  Conduct  and  Morals,  by  Annie  Besant      .     .     228 

20.  The  Desire  to  Restrict  Fertility,  by  the  New  South  Wales 

Royal  Commission  on  the  Decline  of  the  Birth  Rate     234 

21.  The  Ethics  of  Neo-Malthusianism,  by  Havelock  Ellis    .     .     236 

BOOK  II.    IMMIGRATION 

VII.  ECONOMIC  FACTORS 

Introduction 242 

22.  Causes  of  Emigration  from  Europe,  by  the  United  States 

Immigration  Commission 243 

23.  Annual  Immigration,  1820-1915  (Chart) 262 

24.  The  Industrial  Significance  of  Recent  Immigration,  by  the 

United  States  Immigration  Commission 264 

25.  The    Annual    Earnings    of    Immigrant   Families,   by  the 

United  States  Immigration  Commission 315 

26.  Occupations    of   the    First    and    Second    Generations   of 

Immigrants 317 

27.  Propositions  concerning  the  Occupational  Distribution  of 

the  Labor  Supply,  by  T.  N.  Carver 319 

28.  The  Influence  of  Immigration  upon  the  Native  Birth  Rate, 

by  Francis  A.  Walker 321 

VIII.  ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT 

Introduction 329 

29.  The  Question  of  Assimilation,  by  Emily  Greene  Balch     330 

30.  Democracy  versus  the  Melting  Pot  —  a  Study  of  American 

Nationality,  by  Horace  M.  Kallen 344 


CONTENTS  xi 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

IX.  THE  REGULATION  AND  RESTRICTION  OF  IMMIGRATION 

Introduction 372 

31.  The  Main  Provisions  of  the  Immigration  Act  of  1907,  as 

amended  in  1910 373 

32.  Recommendations  of  the  United  States  Immigration  Com- 

mission      382 

33.  The  Restriction  of  Immigration,  by  H.  P.  Fairchild    .     .     .     387 

34.  Some  Fallacies  with  Regard  to  Immigration,  by  Walter  F. 

Willcox 395 

35.  An  Argument  against  Restriction  of  Immigration,  by  Max 

J.  Kohler 401 

36.  The  Literacy  Test  as  Provided  for  by  the  Sixty-Third  Con- 

gress, 1915,  and  President  Wilson's  Veto 405 

37.  The  Problem  of  Oriental  Immigration,  by  Sidney  L.  Gulick     409 

38.  The  Ethical  Aspects  of  Regulation,  by  Prescott  F.  Hall  .     .     419 

BOOK  III.    THE  WOMAN   PROBLEM 

X.  THE  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  IDEAL  OF  WOMAN  AND  THE  EARLY 
MOVEMENT  FOR  WOMEN'S  RIGHTS 

Introduction 423 

39.  An  Estimate  of  the  Character  and  Capacity  of  Women,  by 

Thomas  Gisborne 424 

40.  Attitude  of  the  Orthodox  Clergy  toward  the  Early  Women's 

Rights  Movement 427 

41.  On  the   Character  and   Proper   Education  of  Women,  by 

J.  J.  Rousseau 428 

42.  The   Influence  of  Education  and   Social   Environment  on 

Woman's  Character,  by  Mary  Wollstonecraft  ....     433 

43.  Declaration  of  Sentiments  Adopted  by  the  First  Woman's 

Rights  Convention,  1848 440 

XI.  THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN 

Introduction 447 

44.  The    Position    of    Women    under   the    Common    Law,   by 

William  Blackstone 448 

45.  Suffrage  for  Women :   A  Speech  Delivered  in  the  House 

of  Commons,  by  John  Stuart  Mill 452 

46.  Is  Woman  Suffrage  Important?  by  Max  Eastman      .     .     .     466 

47.  Some  of  the  Reasons  against  Woman  Suffrage,  by  Francis 

Parkman 478 


xii  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


(HATTER 


XII.  THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT  :  ECONOMIC,  SOCIAL,  AND 
ETHICAL  CONSIDERATIONS 

Introduction 492 

48.  Woman  and  the  Occupations,  by  W.  I.  Thomas      .     .     .     493 

49.  The  Effect  of  Society  Life  and  Fashion  upon  Women  in 

the  Nineteenth  Century,  by  Mary  R.  Coolidge  .     .     .      509 

50.  How  Home  Conditions  React  upon  the  Family,  by  Charlotte 

Perkins  Oilman 521 

51.  Social  Use  of  the  Postgraduate  Mother,  by  Anna  Garlin 

Spencer 535 

XIII.  THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN 

Introduction 549 

52.  Plato  on  the  Talents  and  Education  of  Women  ....     550 

53.  Are  there  "  Natural "  Differences  in  the  Mentality  of  the 

Sexes?  by  Helen  B.  Thompson 552 

54.  Woman's  Education  —  a  Forecast,  by  Charles  W.  Eliot     562 

55.  The  Education  of  the  Girl,  by  Mary  Leal  Harkness     .     .     567 


BOOK  IV.    MARRIAGE  AND  DIVORCE 

XIV.  THE  MARRIAGE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE 

Introduction 580 

~6.  The  Teachings  of  Jesus  and  of  Paul 581 

57.  The  Catholic  Doctrine  of  Marriage,  by  II.  A.  Bran       .     .  586 

58.  The   Protestant   Doctrine  of   Marriage  and   Divorce,  by 

George  Eliot  Howard 593 

59.  The  Social  Gospel  of  Divorce,  by  Shailer  Matthews     .     .      599 

60.  The  Repressive  Influence  of  Marriage  upon  Individuality, 

by  Mona  Caird 602 

61.  Marriage  not  a  Contract,  by  Havel ock  Ellis 609 

XV.  THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT 

62.  The  Real  Causes  of  Divorce,  by  J.  P.  Lichtenberger    .      .     621 

63.  The  Need  of  Principles  in  Divorce  Legislation,  by  Cosmo 

Ebor,  William  Anson,  and  Lewis  T.  Dibdin  ....     649 

64.  Uniform  Divorce  Law  Proposed  by  the  National  Congress 

on  Uniform  Divorce  Laws 657 


CONTENTS  xiii 

BOOK  V.    THE  NEGRO  PROBLEM  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XVI.  THE  PROBLEM 

65.  The   Psychological    Influences  of   Reconstruction,   by 

Alfred  Holt  Stone 665 

66.  The  South  and  the  Negro,  by  Edgar  Gardner  Murphy     677 

67.  A  Southern  Senator's  Views  on  the  Race  Situation  in 

the  South,  by  James  K.  Vardaman 704 

XVII.  THE  ECONOMIC  CONDITION  OF  THE  NEGRO 

68.  The   Economic   Condition  of   the   Negro   Farmer,   by 

Carl  Kelsey 713 

69.  The  Economic  Future  of  the  Negro  American    .      .      .      726 

XVIII.  RACE  SEGREGATION  AND  DISCRIMINATION 

70.  Race  Segregation  in  Cities,  by  G.  E.  Haynes      .      .      .      742 

71.  The  Results  of  Color  Prejudice,  by  W.  E.  B.  DuBois     752 

72.  Problems  of  Citizenship,  by  Ray  Stannard  Baker    .      .      755 

XIX.  THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  NEGRO 

73.  Atlanta  Exposition  Address,  by  Booker  T.  Washington     765 

74.  Industrial   Education  and   Public   Schools,  by   Booker 

T.  Washington 769 

75.  On  the  Training  of  Black  Men,  by  W.  E.  B.  DuBois     774 

76.  A  Brief  for  the  Higher  Education  of  the  Negro,  by 

Kelly  Miller 777 

77.  The  Problem  from  an  Ethnologist's  Point  of  View,  by 

Franz  Boas 784 

INDEX 791 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL 
PROBLEMS 

INTRODUCTION 

In  the  long  run  the  basic  social  problem  is  that  of  population. 
Economically  the  most  fundamental  relation  is  that  between  man 
and  natural  resources.  The  laws  governing  that  relation  must  be 
understood  and  reckoned  with  first  of  all,  in  theories  of  social 
progress  or  in  plans  for  the  lasting  improvement  of  the  condi- 
tion of  the  people.  If  these  natural  laws,  whatever  they  may  be, 
are  not  taken  into  consideration,  every  plan  and  ideal  for  human 
betterment  runs  the  risk  of  impracticability,  or  else  of  being 
brought  to  naught  even  after  it  has  seemingly  realized  its  pur- 
pose. The  nature  of  natural  resources  sets  a  limit,  albeit  an 
elastic  one,  to  man's  productivity — a  limit  which  may  be  at  a 
given  time  and  place  so  highly  elastic  or  so  far  in  the  future 
that  it  does  not  seem  a  reality,  but  at  another  place  or  time 
may  prove  to  be  a  very  present  fact.  No  principle  of  economic 
science  is  better  established  than  that  sooner  or  later  with  in- 
creasing population  the  law  of  diminishing  returns  will  assert 
itself  in  a  way  that  will  demand  changes  in  economic,  social, 
and  political  policies,  if  the  average  material  well-being  of  a 
people  is  not  to  be  brought  to  a  standstill  or  actually  to  go 
backward.  Moreover,  a  certain  level  of  material  wealth  is  a  pre- 
requisite to  even  a  moderate  development  of  the  cultural  and 
spiritual  content  of  life.  Failure  or  unwillingness,  therefore,  to 
consider  the  limitation  placed  upon  the  material  basis  of  progress 
by  a  strictly  limited  supply  of  land,  and  the  increasing  difficulty 
of  securing  the  food,  raw  materials,  and  power  requisite  to  the 
needs  of  an  expanding  population,  can  be  attributed  only  to 
ingrained  preconception  and  prejudice. 


2  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Probably  in  few  fields  of  social  or  ethical  thought  has  there 
been  as  much  loose  reasoning,  as  great  a  lack  of  information, 
and  as  much  seeming .  aversion  to  grapple  with  fundamentals, 
as  in  matters  involving  what  is  popularly,  vaguely,  and  often 
erroneously  known  as  Malthiisianism.  Many  of  the  prevalent 
views  of  population  are  as  naive  as  those  of  the  Middle  Ages; 
and  with  the  volcanic  outburst  of  militarism  in  Europe  in  1914 
there  inevitably  comes  a  pronounced  recrudescence  of  Mercan- 
tilist and  Cameralist  views  of  population — an  overweening  desire 
and  a  seeming  national  necessity  for  earlier  marriage,  higher 
birth  rates,  and  larger  families,  to  fill  up  the  hideous  gaps  made 
by  enemy  shells.  Whether  the  nature  of  human  ambition,  the 
drive  of  international  competition,  is  such  that  the  military  argu- 
ment for  a  high  birth  rate,  regardless  of  costs,  will  retain  per- 
petual validity  is  perhaps  the  deepest  phase  of  the  population 
question,  upon  the  outcome  of  which  the  world's  economic  and 
social  destiny  hangs.  Certainly  the  pressure  of  population,  which 
Plato  regarded  as  the  first  cause  of  soldiers,  war,  and  conquest, 
and  which  to-day  is  at  least  one  of  the  causes  of  rivalry  for  mar- 
kets, colonies,  and  power,  must  receive  the  most  serious  sort  of 
study  by  those  who  hope  to  see  a  real  impetus  toward  interna- 
tional peace  resultant  upon  the  present  European  struggle.  Not 
a  few  ardent  social  workers  and  reformers,  many  socialists,  and 
most  individualistic  optimists  are  either  supremely  oblivious  of 
the  real  population  problems  or  think  it  sufficient  to  brush  aside 
what  they  contemptuously  refer  to  as  Malthusianism.  This  habit 
of  mind  is  more  likely  to  be  prevalent  in  a  new  country  than  an 
old  one. 

Controversy  over  the   population   question  has  for  a  century 

|  and  a  quarter  pivoted  on  the  theory  of  Malthus,  under  various 

1  interpretations  and  misinterpretations.    The  central    thought  of 

Malthus  and  of  most  economists  since  his  day,  that  nature  sets 

a  much  closer  limit  on  man's  power  of  producing  wealth,  and 

particularly  subsistence,  than  upon  the  power  of  multiplying  his 

kind,  has  been  a  stumblingblock   to  idealists  of  all  types.    The 

earlier  years  of  the  nineteenth  century  brought  forth  a  copious 

and   curious   literature   of   criticism  and   attempted   refutation  of 


INTRODUCTION  3 

Malthus's  theory.  Whether  as  left  by  Malthus :  it  has  under- 
gone, from  this  and  later  criticism,  any  vital  revision  must  be 
left  to  the  student's  own  judgment.  The  truth,  falsity,  or  finality 
of  Malthus's  thought  is,  however,  an  academic  matter.  One 
should  seek  a  true  insight  into  the  forces  which  govern  population 
phenomena  of  all  kinds  and  which  may  delimit  and  condition,  or, 
on  the  other  hand,  may  stimulate  and  further,  social  progress. 
Gradually  sociology  and  psychology  have  been  drawn  upon  to 
supplement  the  earlier  statement  of  the  problem.  New  elements 
are  recognized,  or  at  least  given  clearer  definition  and  altered 
emphasis.  Various  sociological  and  psychological  modifications 
of  the  Malthusian  analysis  have  therefore  been  proposed,  and 
have  in  part  found  acceptance.  While  there  is  still  a  plentiful 
lack  of  agreement  as  to  the  nature  and  force  of  the  laws  of 
human  increase,  it  is  certain  that  we  understand  the  various  ele- 
ments of  the  problem  much  better  than  was  formerly  possible. 
Meanwhile  it  has  increased  in  complexity  and  takes  on  exceed- 
ingly diverse  practical  aspects  at  different  times  and  places,  now 
one  factor,  and  now  another,  calling  for  emphasis. 

The  declining  birth  rate  in  England,  France,  and  the  cities 
of  Germany,  to  mention  the  striking  European  instances,  the 
decreased  number  of  children  in  American  families,  and  the  fact 
that  the  size  of  the  family  varies  with  social  and  economic  status 
("  differential  birth  rate ")  have  created  a  new  situation  which 
Malthus  did  not  face,  and  one  which  has  been  taken  to  disprove 
his  theories.  Search  for  the  causes  of  the  falling  birth  rate  has 
led  into  psychological  and  sociological  fields  and  discovered  influ- 
ences and  forces  little  active  and  hence  unnoticed  in  Malthus's 
time.  The  checks  that  he  recognized  collectively  as  prudential, 
and  which  he  regarded  as  chiefly  economic  in  character,  are  now 
seen  to  be  far  more  complex  than  he  supposed.  The  rise  of 
democracy,  the  modern  woman  movement,  and  the  increasing 
emphasis  on  parental  responsibility,  for  instance,  are  essentially 
new  psychological  forces,  the  significance  of  which  as  possible 
bulwarks  against  overpopulation  it  is  of  the  greatest  importance 
to  examine. 

1  In  the  second  and  subsequent  editions. 


4  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

The  problem  is  now  recognized,  too,  as  a  question  of  the 
quality,  as  well  as  the  quantity,  of  population.  The  eugenics 
idea,  whether  or  not  it  prove  capable  of  development  into  a  new 
"  science,"  the  foundation  for  a  new  population  policy,  — the  con- 
scious improvement  of  the  human  stock,  —  has  opened  our  eyes 
to  some  very  present  evils  and  dangers.  It  is  unfortunate  that 
our  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  heredity,  which  is  the  basis  of 
eugenics,  is  so  uncertain  and  fragmentary,  and  that  the  progress 
of  investigation  must  necessarily  be  slow.  Otherwise  we  might 
look  for  a  rapid  and  at  the  same  time  sure  progress  of  both 
theoretical  and  practical  eugenics.  Even  with  the  advance  of 
genetic  psychology  and  experimental  genetics  much  doubt  must 
continue  to  exist  with  regard  to  the  relative  influence  of  environ- 
ment and  heredity.  The  laymen  may  well  await  the  verdict  of 
time,  also,  as  to  the  validity  of  the  methods  of  investigation  used 
by  the  biometricians  of  the  Pearson  school  in  England,  and  of 
Mendelism,  upon  which  as  a  working  hypothesis  the  investiga- 
tions of  the  Eugenics  Record  Office,1  and  most  other  American 
work,  are  being  carried  out.  Meanwhile  it  is  desirable  to  know 
what  the  problems  of  eugenics  are,  and  what  the  difficulties  in 
the  way. 

Another  matter  of  more  recent  study  is  the  high  rate  of  infant 
mortality.  From  no  rational  point  of  view  is  it  possible  to  regard 
the  production  of  feeble-minded  children  and  other  defective  and 
hopelessly  inefficient  elements  of  the  population  in  any  other  way 
than  as  a  dangerous  and  unnecessary  waste  of  human  energy. 
A  high  infant  death  rate  must  be  looked  at  in  the  same  light, 
as  must,  of  course,  a  high  death  rate  among  children  or  youth 
of  whatever  age.  It  involves  a  useless  expenditure  of  vital  and 
social  energy,  which  is  at  least  in  large  part  preventable.  France 
and  England  have  been  ahead  in  the  study  of  the  causes  and 
prevention  of  infant  mortality,  but  vigorous  work  is  now  being 
done  in  the  United  States  by  the  American  Association  for  the 
Study  and  Prevention  of  Infant  Mortality  and  by  the  Federal 
Children's  Bureau.  It  should  be  a  matter  of  shame  to  Americans 
that  our  states  have  been  so  slow  to  establish  adequate  registration 

1  Cold  Spring  Harbor,  Long  Island. 


INTRODUCTION  5 

laws  that  even  to-day  we  have  to  work  with  dishearteningly  in- 
adequate statistical  information  as  to  the  probable  infant  death 
rate  in  American  communities.1 

With  the  gradual  abatement  of  infant  mortality  and  of  the 
general  death  rate,  brought  about  by  the  advance  of  medical  and 
sanitary  science,  we  should  have  to  look  for  a  rapid  increase  in 
the  population  in  all  Western  countries,  were  there  not  some 
evident  tendency  for  the  number  of  children  born  in  a  given 
population  to  decline  also.  Whether  the  birth  rate  is  likely  to 
continue  to  diminish,  regardless  of  social  and  economic  condi- 
tions, or  whether  its  continued  decline  will  be  sharp  enough  to 
counterbalance  the  falling  death  rate,  are  questions  upon  which 
opinions  may  differ.  The  net  growth  ("  natural  increase  ")  of  a 
population,  barring  the  effects  of  emigration  and  immigration,  is 
of  course  the  excess  of  the  birth  rate  over  the  death  rate  in  any 
given  time. 

An  increasing  population  brings  with  it  concentration  into 
cities,  overcrowding,  poor  housing,  increased  competition  for 
work,  and  constantly  heavier  demands  on  the  power  of  agri- 
culture to  produce  subsistence.  Nevertheless,  many  people  look 
upon  a  large  and  constantly  increasing  population  as  a  national 
necessity,  whatever  may  be  the  tendency  toward  poverty,  high 
cost  of  living,  and  internal  dissension  that  may  arise  from  it. 
There  is  felt,  always,  the  menace  of  foreign  armies  and  navies. 
For  England  "The  Hun  is  at  the  gate!  "  for  Germany  hordes 
of  Cossacks  cloud  the  eastern  horizon,  for  France,  with  her  sta- 
tionary population,  German  militarism  proves  a  not  unreal  peril, 
and  for  us  is  the  "  Yellow  Peril "  —  whether  real  or  imaginary 
no  one  can  surely  say.  Does  it  not  behoove  every  nation,  then, 
which  desires  to  preserve  its  power  and  independence  to  see  to  it 
that  it  not  only  has  full  coffers  and  the  latest  models  in  ordnance 
but  a  plentiful  population  from  which  to  draft  soldiers  and  taxes? 
Because  the  ideal  of  international  peace  seems  to  some  chimerical, 
because  they  look  for  a  continuance  of  greedy  and  unscrupulous 
international  struggle  for  markets,  because  the  danger  of  foreign 

1  See  Birth  Registration,  an  Aid  in  Protecting  the  Lives  and  Rights  of  Chil- 
dren. United  States  Children's  Bureau,  Monograph  No.  i,  2d  ed.,  1914. 


6  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

military  aggression  seems  continuous  and  great,  a  certain  type  of 
thinker  sees  no  other  logical  or  ethical  population  policy  than  to 
encourage  in  every  possible  way  the  production  of  large  families. 
He  looks  with  dismay  on  what  is  popularly  called  race  suicide. 
On  the  other  hand,  others  minimize  these  dangers,  pin  their  faith 
to  the  gradual  triumph  of  reason,  arbitration,  and  peace,  but  per- 
ceive the  real  national  dangers  to  lie  within.  They  wish  defense 
against  what  seems  to  them  a  rising  tide  of  poverty,  neglect, 
overcrowding,  undernutrition,  criminality,  and  increasing  volume 
of  mental  defect,  especially  feeble-mindedness  ;  and  they  see  no 
fundamentally  adequate  defense  against  these  and  kindred  evils 
except  a  retardation  in  the  rate  of  population  growth.  Many  a 
sober  and  experienced  social  worker  has  uttered  a  fervent  wish 
for  a  cessation  of  the  flood  of  unneeded  babies,  born  of  worn-out 
mothers  and  destined  to  swell  the  ranks  of  the  inefficient  and  the 
unemployed.  The  ethical  issue  is  thus  sharply  drawn  between 
Neo-Cameralism  and  Neo-Malthusianism. 

For  the  United  States  the  population  problem  is  complicated 
by  immigration.  Formerly  the  prevalent  American  sentiment 
was  favorable  to  the  open  door,  that  American  resources,  then 
seemingly  exhaustless,  might  be  thrown  open  on  equal  terms  to 
all  the  peoples  of  the  earth  —  or  at  least  of  Europe.  By  welcom- 
ing the  oppressed  of  all  lands  we  could  not  only  do  ourselves  a 
good  turn,  but  we  could  relieve  the  pressure  of  poverty  from 
Land's  End  to  Calabria.  Thus  were  we  to  help  the  masses  of 
Europe  toward  our  own  high  standard  of  living.  Most  foreign- 
born  Americans  very  naturally  still  hold  to  this  view.  Immigra- 
tion is  at  bottom  a  phenomenon  of  individualism.  The  immigrant 
comes  from  economic,  less  often  from  other,  motives,  which  have 
to  do  with  his  own  individual,  or  his  family's,  interests.  The 
American  workman  opposes  his  coming,  in  great  measure  from 
equally  individualistic  motives  — •  fear  of  his  competition  in  the 
labor  market.  The  history  of  immigration,  of  course,  shows  a 
variety  of  causes  for  the  movement,  which,  however,  boil  down 
to  two  —  desire  to  better  one's  economic  condition,  and  to  escape 
political  persecution.  The  latter  motive,  except  in  the  case  of  the 
Jews,  and  perhaps  of  the  Poles,  has  ceased  to  be  of  importance. 


INTRODUCTION  7 

The  present  immigration  problem  is  fundamentally  economic, 
a  conflict  of  economic  interests.  It  is  to  the  interest  of  the  alien 
to  come,  and  to  that  of  the  steamship  companies  and  the  employ- 
ers of  cheap  labor  in  large  batches  to  have  him  come.  It  is  to 
the  interest  of  the  workmen  already  here  to  restrict  immigration 
and  to  protect,  in  so  far  as  it  can  now  be  done,  the  American 
scale  of  wages.  The  social,  political,  criminological,  and  even 
eugenic  aspects  of  the  immigrant's  influence  on  American  life 
and  institutions  have  been  dwelt  upon  both  by  the  advocates  and 
the  opponents  of  restriction.  These  aspects  have  been  in  some 
ways  overemphasized.  The  debate  on  restriction  hinges  essen- 
tially on  the  industrial  and  economic  aspects  of  the  situation. 

So  also  does  the  problem  of  distribution  and  assimilation. 
Many  regard  distribution  of  immigrants  over  the  country,  to  get 
them  where  natural  resources  call  for  them  and  to  relieve  the 
congestion  of  the  crowded  cities  of  the  northeastern  states,  as  the 
essential  first  step  toward  real  assimilation  to  American  standards 
and  ideals  and  to  ultimate  amalgamation.  The  "melting  pot" 
is  to  be  the  whole  country.  A  different  note  is  struck  by  those 
leaders  of  the  dominant  races  of  the  newer  immigration  who  are 
beginning  to  question  the  need  or  the  desirability  of  a  nation- 
wide reduction  of  all  nationalities  to  a  common  psychological 
"American"  type  —  who  rather  look  with  approbation  upon  the 
possibility  that  the  United  States  may  become  a  land  of  many 
languages,  many  diverse  national  group-ideals,  each  hyphenated 
by  historical  association  with  an  Old  World  people  and  an  Old 
World  tradition.  Still  other  thoughtful  students  hold  that  assimi- 
lation is  not  in  any  case  the  primary  problem,  but  that,  with  little 
regard  to  relative  assimilability  of  different  races,  the  main  task 
is  to  secure  such  a  diminution  of  the  immigrant  tide  as  shall 
enable  the  people  of  the  United  States  to  make  their  contribu- 
tion to  civilization  before  they  are  swamped  in  foreign  numbers 
and  foreign  social  and  economic  poverty. 

Whatever  may  be  thought  of  immigration  restriction  in  general, 
the  policy  of  Chinese  exclusion  meets  with  practically  universal 
approval.  The  California  Japanese  problem  is  one,  however,  that 
cannot  be  so  easily  settled,  even  temporarily.  It  has  not  claimed 


8  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  attention  it  deserves  for  the  reason  that  it  has  been  regarded 
in  the  light  of  a  Pacific  Coast,  and  therefore  a  sectional,  problem 
springing  out  of  local  conflicts  of  economic  interest  and  tem- 
porarily involving  the  federal  government  in  a  delicate  situation. 
It  is  in  abeyance  for  the  time  being  but  it  is  fraught  with  diffi- 
culties and  dangers  to  international  peace  and  comity  that 
demand  most  careful  and  calm  study  by  unbiased  persons. 

The  whole  ethics  of  the  immigration  question  will  be  found 
on  final  analysis  to  turn  on  the  pivot  of  national  resources  — 
whether  the  United  States  can  maintain  an  open-door  policy 
without  itself  rapidly  approaching  the  Old  World  conditions  of 
overpopulation,  class  friction,  and  low  standards  of  living,  which 
are  the  main  causes  of  the  swelling  tide  of  aliens  pouring  in 
upon  us.  Looked  at  in  this  way,  immigration  is  only  one  aspect 
of  the  larger  population  problem.  In  any  case  it  will  soon  be 
settled.  The  population  problem  is  one  of  centuries  ;  this  is  one 
of  decades.  Compared  with  problems  of  sex  and  of  race,  immi- 
gration is  a  temporary  matter.  But  that  does  not  make  it  unim- 
portant to  the  destiny  of  the  country. 

When  the  history  of  the  twentieth  century  comes  to  be  writ- 
ten, from  a  standpoint  far  enough  away  in  time  to  enable  it  to  be 
seen  in  due  perspective,  it  is  not  unlikely  that  the  pronounced 
change  in  the  social,  political,  and  economic  position  of  women 
will  be  described  as  one  of  the  most  characteristic  features  of 
the  whole  era.  Every  period  is  an  era  of  change,  but  some  are 
more  so  than  others,  and  it  is  difficult  to  escape  the  conviction 
that  ours  is  a  time  of  peculiarly  rapid  and  pronounced  trans- 
formation of  social  and  ethical  ideals,  especially  of  the  ideals 
in  the  light  of  which  the  character  of  men  and  women,  respec- 
tively, is  measured,  and  the  morality  of  existing  relations  between 
the  sexes  judged.  To  many  people  the  woman  movement,  in  this 
or  that  aspect,  seems  to  have  developed  with  even  greater  sud- 
denness than  is  the  case.  That  is  perhaps  the  reason  why  even 
many  intelligent  persons  see  no  more  of  the  unrest  and  breaking 
up  of  old  standards  and  accepted  traditions  than  may  be  involved 
in  woman's  demand  for  equal  political  rights.  Where  the  world's 


INTRODUCTION  9 

standards  and  thought  have  been  largely  the  product  of  mascu- 
line sentiment  and  logic,  in  which  heretofore  woman's  economic 
and  social  position  has  usually  caused  her  to  acquiesce,  although 
often,  very  probably,  not  without  secret,  or  with  but  mildly  ex- 
pressed, misgivings  or  resentment,  it  was  natural  and  certain  that 
women  would  be  very  slow  consciously  and  openly  to  question 
the  old  ideals.  And  before  the  leaven  of  the  democracy  ideal  had 
worked  its  way  into  social  ethics  it  was  not  likely  that  men  would 
come  to  a  consciousness  of  the  complex  set  of  difficulties  and 
maladjustments  that  are  now  so  insistently  coming  to  the  fore- 
ground and  which  for  want  of  a  better  term  we  call  the  woman 
problem,  although  from  certain  points  of  view  it  is  no  more  a 
woman  problem  than  a  man  problem. 

It  is  not  possible  to  summarize  in  a  few  paragraphs  the  ele- 
ments of  a  problem  that  is  as  wide  as  this  one,  which  touches  at 
every  point  —  biological,  economic,  political,  educational,  psycho- 
logical, and  ethical  —  the  life  of  a  whole  sex,  and  by  that  token, 
of  two  whole  sexes.  The  woman  movement  doubtless  will  pro- 
duce some  waste  products,  many  temporary  discomforts,  espe- 
cially to  men,  —  and  most  especially  to  those  men  who  are  either 
ignorant  or  contemptuous  of  the  question,  —  discomforts  due  to 
unsettled  standards,  relations,  and  organization.  Like  every  great 
evolutionary  change  it  doubtless  involves  society  in  certain  dan- 
gers, as  well  as  promises  of  great  gains.  In  any  case  it  is  cer- 
tain that  the  world's  notions  of  woman,  and  what  she  ought  to 
be  and  do,  are  undergoing  unprecedentedly  rapid  change  to-day, 
and  that  problems  and  most  puzzling  questions  of  economy  and 
ethics  are  appearing  where  none  were  before.  The  condition  of 
the  woman  worker  in  industry,  and  in  the  home  too,  and  efforts 
to  regulate  the  conditions  of  employment,  either  in  her  own  in- 
terest or  that  of  her  children,  are  important  practical  questions 
of  social  economy.  Such  matters,  however,  demanding  imme- 
diate action  as  they  often  do,  are  nevertheless  incidental  to  the 
larger  ethical  problem  of  woman's  capacity  for  varied  careers, 
of  her  right  to  work,  and  to  such  work  as  she  may  find  herself 
adapted  to,  of  her  duty  as  child-bearer  and  nurturer,  of  widening 
and  heightening  her  interests,  of  the  introduction  of  scientific 


io  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

management  and  organization  into  domestic  economy,  of  the  pos- 
sibility, or  desirability,  of  harmonizing  woman's  duty  and  joy  as 
mother  with  economic  productivity  outside  the  home,  and,  most 
basic  of  all,  of  securing  for  her  an  economic  independence  which 
shall  insure  to  her  a  real  ethical  responsibility  as  a  human  indi- 
vidual. Whether,  by  some  process  not  now  discernible,  women 
are  to  be  eliminated  from  industry  and  the  professions  and  dedi- 
cated exclusively  to  wifehood  and  motherhood  ;  whether  they  are 
to  work  outside  the  home  till  married,  then  to  break  their  eco- 
nomic and  industrial  habits  and  relations  squarely  off  and  retire 
to  the  drawing  room  or  the  kitchen,  as  the  case  may  be ;  or 
whether,  as  Charlotte  Perkins  Oilman  has  long  and  ably  advo- 
cated, division  of  labor,  specialization,  scientific  organization,  are  to 
be  extended  to  domestic  economics,  and  woman,  as  woman,  freed 
from  the  tradition  that  housework  or  house  management  is  her 
one  God-given  function  —  these  are  questions  that  are  sure  to 
have  increasing  discussion,  and  which  are  even  now  weaving  new 
designs  into  the  social  fabric. 

Intimately  connected  with  the  woman  question,  and  from  one 
point  of  view  a  part  of  it,  is  the  problem  of  marriage  and  divorce. 
Since  the  publication  of  the  famous  Report  on  Marriage  and 
Divorce  by  the  United  States  Commissioner  of  Labor  in  1886, 
there  has  been  much  agitation  of  the  divorce  question  in  this 
country,  an  agitation  for  stricter  statutes,  matched  at  the  same 
time  by  a  strong  movement  in  England  for  more  liberal  legisla- 
tion. With  the  publication  in  1908-1909  by  the  United  States 
Census  Bureau  of  a  special  report  bringing  the  statistics  of  mar- 
riage and  divorce  down  to  1906,  popular  solicitude  has  increased, 
at  equal  pace  with  the  divorce  rate  itself.  Sharp  difference 
of  opinion  has  arisen  as  to  what  is  a  proper  attitude  toward 
divorce.  Demands  for  uniform  divorce  laws  in  the  several  states, 
for  reduction  in  the  number  of  legal  grounds  for  divorce,  and 
for  the  reform  of  court  procedure  have  been  numerous,  and  from 
sources  regarded  as  of  high  authority.  On  the  other  hand,  there 
is  strong  opposition  to  any  radical  diminution  of  the  opportunity 
to  break  the  bonds  of  an  unsuccessful  marriage.  There  is,  of 
course,  every  degree  of  opinion  from  that  of  those  who  advocate 


II 

unlimited  and  free  divorce  to  those  who  would  follow  the  state 
of  South  Carolina  and  the  doctrine  of  the  Catholic  Church  in 
forbidding  divorce  altogether.  Evidences  of  an  increasing  strain 
on  the  bonds  of  matrimony,  of  increasing  unrest  and  dissatisfac- 
tion at  the  present  status  of  the  institution,  and  of  a  highly 
unsettled  condition  in  the  organization  of  the  family  are  not 
lacking.  Some  attribute  all  this  to  a  decline  in  moral  sense  and 
stamina,  to  increasing  materialism  and  selfishness,  to  a  deplorable 
lack  of  religious  feeling ;  others  to  the  growth  of  democracy,  the 
development  of  a  stronger  sense  of  individuality  and  personality 
in  women,  to  a  growing  economic  independence  of  women  and 
profound  changes  in  the  economic  relations  of  the  family,  to  edu- 
cation, or  sometimes  the  lack  of  it,  and  to  the  general  growth 
of  an  ethics  of  rationalism  and  social  utilitarianism.  Ecclesiastical 
doctrines,  popular  conceptions,  and  rationalistic  views  of  marriage, 
and  consequently  of  divorce,  are  seemingly  hopelessly  at  variance. 
Thus  the  problem  is  far  more  than  a  question  of  court  procedure, 
of  securing,  an  immediate  diminution  in  the  amount  of  divorce 
through  uniform  statutes  or  the  like,  or  even  of  the  reform  of 
marriage  and  registration  laws  so  that  a  precipitate  entrance  into 
the  matrimonial  state  will  not  be  so  easy  as  now.  It  is  one  of  the 
deepest  problems  of  social  ethics,  in  which  many  economic  and 
psychological  factors  are  involved,  and  in  which  different  social 
viewpoints  —  individual  or  social,  a  priori  or  scientific,  democratic 
or  class,  ecclesiastical  or  rationalistic  —  are  bound  to  lead  to 
conflicting  conclusions. 

Since  the  marriage  relation  in  the  Western  world  was  for  so 
many  centuries  under  church  control,  it  is  necessary  to  study 
the  historical  conflict  between  State  and  Church,  between  ecclesi- 
asticism  and  rationalism,  over  the  question.  Marriage  under 
Roman  Law,  the  early  Christian  doctrine,  the  development  of 
Canon  Law  control,  the  influence  of  the  Reformation,  the  final 
embodiment  of  Catholic  doctrine,  and  modern  Protestant  modifi- 
cations must  all  necessarily  be  examined.  So  too  must  the  ethics 
of  the  diverse  historical  views.  The  history  of  divorce,  of  mar- 
riage and  divorce  law,  and  of  marriage  forms,  must  claim  some 
attention  ;  and  finally  the  modern  rationalistic  and  evolutionary 


12 

views  of  marriage  and  divorce  must  receive  open-minded  critical 
discussion.  Especially  must  the  causes  of  unhappy  and  unsuc- 
cessful marriages  be  sought  out  —  not  the  legal  grounds  upon 
which  the  cases  may  be  tried  in  the  courts,  but  the  real  con- 
ditions, the  real  motives,  which  make  people  willing  to  undergo 
the  disagreeable  publicity,  the  confession  of  failure,  the  breaking 
up  of  the  closest  of  bonds,  which  must  nearly  always  be  involved 
in  application  for  divorce.  It  will  doubtless  prove  in  time  that 
the  present  high  divorce  rate  is  the  natural  product  of  a  period 
of  great  economic,  ethical,  and  religious  readjustment,  and  that 
when  these  changes  have  more  nearly  worked  themselves  out,  a 
natural,  and  perhaps  rapid,  decline  in  the  amount  of  divorce  may 
be  looked  for.  The  ethics  of  divorce  and  of  divorce  legislation, 
already  accomplished  or  proposed,  can  rightly  be  judged  only  in 
the  light  of  these  larger  considerations. 

If  social  maladjustments  due  to  sex  are  difficult  to  cure,  what 
is  to  be  said  of  the  race  question  and  especially  of  the  negro 
problem  in  the  United  States  ?  In  no  field  of  social  relations 
is  there  so  great  a  conflict  of  interests  and  ideals,  and  in  none  is 
there  greater  need  of  calm  study  and  of  effort  to  understand  all 
points  of  view.  Barring,  momentarily,  questions  of  the  anthro- 
pological status  of  the  negro,  the  race  problem  may  be  considered 
to  have  two  main  roots — one  economic,  the  other  psychological. 
The  historical  development  of  the  situation  in  America  to-day 
goes  back  to  the  economic  institution,  slavery ;  but  the  conflict 
of  interest,  the  lack  of  understanding,  and  the  unreasoning  preju- 
dice which  have  marked  racial  relations  were  made  very  much 
more  acute  than  they  otherwise  would  have  been  by  the  psycho- 
logical reactions  of  Reconstruction  days.  While  it  would  be  erro- 
neous to  trace  the  temper  of  the  South,  in  matters  pertaining  to 
the  negro,  exclusively  to  what  the  Southern  people  went  through 
in  the  Reconstruction  era,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  experi- 
ence of  that  time  did  more  than  anything  else  to  determine  the 
South 's  subsequent  attitude  toward  the  negro,  and  toward  the 
difficulty  with  which  as  yet  either  North  or  South  can  be  brought 
to  a  study  of  the  problem  from  a  strictly  scientific  point  of  view. 


INTRODUCTION  13 

The  psychological  factors,  numerous  and  difficult  as  they  are, 
are  in  part,  at  least,  derivative  from  the  economic  interests  and 
industrial  conditions  of  the  Southern  states.  The  South  is  by  no 
means  a  unit  economically,  but  up  to  the  present  its  economic 
destiny  has  been  dependent  on  the  production  of  cotton.  Cotton 
can  profitably  be  cultivated  by  cheap  black  labor.  If  negro  labor 
were  suddenly  removed  from  the  cotton  belt,  the  whole  economic 
structure  of  this  region,  except  perhaps  the  great  "  black  land  " 
cotton  area  of  Texas,  where  much  white  child  labor  is  used  in 
the  cotton  fields  of  the  white  tenant  farmers,  would  collapse  to  a 
ruin  temporarily  as  complete  as  that  left  by  the  Civil  War.  It  is 
in  the  cotton  belt  that  the  densest  negro  population  is  found,  and 
it  is  there  that  the  color  line  is  drawn  most  closely.  There  too 
the  most  serious  questioning,  not  to  say  denial,  of  the  value  of 
education  of  any  kind  to  the  negro  is  likely  to  be  encountered. 
It  is  necessary  therefore  to  give  serious  study  to  the  condition 
of  the  negro  farmer,  the  "  cropper,"  and  the  wage  hand  on  the 
plantations.  As  the  South,  especially  the  east  South,  is  becoming 
rapidly  more  industrial,  and  as  the  fate  of  the  negro  in  the  North 
depends  in  no  small  measure  on  industrial  opportunity,  the  con- 
dition and  character  of  the  urban  negro,  both  North  and  South, 
must  receive  attention.  In  how  far  is  the  color  line  drawn  against 
him  in  industry  ?  How  generally  is  the  door  of  industrial  oppor- 
tunity closed  to  him  ?  Has  he  capacity  to  make  use  of  opportunity 
when  it  is  offered  ? 

Many  questions  here  arise  —  questions  as  to  the  type  of  edu- 
cation best  fitted  to  the  negro  in  his  present  circumstances,  what 
educational  ideals  he  should  hold  before  himself,  whether  he 
should  be  called  upon  to  furnish  the  funds  for  his  own  educa- 
tion, whether  the  South  is  doing  its  duty  in  negro  education, 
considering  its  resources,  whether  federal  aid  should  be  forth- 
coming, and  finally  what  effect  education,  of  whatever  type,  will 
have  on  the  thrift  and  efficiency  of  the  negro  and  upon  the 
economic  welfare  of  the  South  as  a  whole. 

Underneath  all  these  questions  lies  the  fundamental  problem 
of  race-psychology  —  whether  there  are  naturally  inferior  races 
which  no  amount  of  education  can  ever  bring  to  the  level  of  the 


14  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

higher  races,  whether  the  negro  has  potential  mental  capacity  to 
profit  by  anything  more  than  the  veriest  rudiments  of  industrial 
training.  These  are  disputed  points  upon  which  there  is  the  bit- 
terest difference  of  opinion,  North  and  South,  but  they  must 
largely  remain  matters  of  opinion  for  a  long  time  to  come,  for 
it  is"  difficult  to  see  how  any  really  scientific  certitude  can  be 
arrived  at  one  way  or  the  other,  inasmuch  as  it  is  impossible  to 
isolate  the  hereditary  factor  from  the  powerful  influences  of  tra- 
dition, custom,  home  training  (and  the  lack  of  it),  in  short  from 
the  suggestive  and  molding  influences  of  social  environment 
which  no  individual  can  escape,  which  are  not  the  same  for  any 
two  persons,  and  which  certainly  are  widely  different  in  the  case 
of  two  races  as  sharply  separated  in  culture  and  culture  history 
as  are  the  negroes  and  the  whites. 

The  much-mooted  questions  of  segregation  run  athwart  all  the 
phases  of  the  problem.  What  the  real  facts  and  motives  of 
segregation  are,  North  and  South,  should  be  known,  and  as  clear 
a  notion  as  possible  arrived  at  as  to  the  real  causes  and  motives 
underlying  it.  It  should  be  emphasized  always  that  praise  or 
blame  is  not  the  object  of  the  true  student  of  the  race  situation. 
His  motive  should  be  before  everything  else  to  understand.  Any 
other  approach  to  the  race  question  —  or  any  other  social  problem 

—  is  unscientific.    It  gets  nowhere,  for  instance,  to  attribute  segre- 
gation   and    its   attendant    discriminations   to    "  race   prejudice." 
For  what  are  the  causes  of  race  prejudice  ;  indeed,  what  is  race 
prejudice  ?    If  the  white  South  is  practically  united  and  unani- 
mous on  the  question  of  segregation  —  the  drawing  of  the  color 
line  —  and  if,  as  many  believe  is  really  the  case,  the  North  is 
only  less  so,  the  causes  must  lie  deeper  than  the  memories  of 
Reconstruction.    The  South  is  undoubtedly  influenced  by  its  eco- 
nomic interests  —  as  is  every  other  country.    It  undoubtedly  fears 
dominance  by  a  mass  of  low,  ignorant,  and  emotional  population 

—  as  does  many  another  region.    It  views  with  some  disquietude, 
perhaps,   the   lowering  of  the  bars  of  opportunity  —  educational, 
economic,  political  —  to  the  negro  for  fear  that  social  equality  will 
be  the  next  demand,  followed  by  racial  intermixture  and  a  mon- 
grelization  of  the  pure  white  stock.    It  is  no  answer  to  these  fears 


INTRODUCTION  15 

to  point  to  the  mulatto  and  to  miscegenation.  Not  every  mulatto 
by  any  means  has  a  white  father. 

The  ethics  of  the  race  problem  —  of  prejudice,  segregation, 
discrimination,  disfranchisement,  curtailment  of  economic  and 
educational  opportunity,  denial  of  social  recognition,  conflict  of 
belief  as  to  the  existence  or  nonexistence  of  naturally,  inher- 
ently, superior  and  inferior  races  —  the  ethics  of  all  these  mat- 
ters cannot  be  found  by  any  rule  of  mathematics  or  on  the  basis 
of  any  a  priori  principle.  Some  of  the  maladjustments  and  causes 
of  friction  can  be  reduced  with  comparative  ease,  if  the  enlight- 
ened better  element  of  the  people  will  go  about  it  in  a  reasonable, 
Christian  spirit.  Others  will  have  to  await  the  fullness  of  time. 
Some  of  the  questions  are  essentially  unsolvable,  as  for  instance 
that  of  the  negro's  innate  capacity,  under  absolutely  equal  oppor- 
tunities with  the  white.  It  seems  highly  probable  that  with  the 
advance  of  the  negro  in  literacy,  in  possession  of  property,  in 
development  of  home  life,  in  industrial  education,  and  in  ambi- 
tion, the  tension  of  the  race  problem  will  become  greater  before 
it  is  less.  In  the  long  run  of  development  and  evolution  great 
changes  of  some  sort  are  bound  to  take  place,  very  gradually, 
probably,  but  none  the  less  real  and  significant.  What  they  will 
be,  how  brought  about,  what  the  readjustment  by  which  two  peo- 
ples can  live  together  in  peace  and  with  the  cooperation  and  full 
utilization  of  human  capacity,  under  which  alone  can  a  community 
be  economical  and  efficient,  it  is  impossible  to  say,  and  rather  idle 
to  speculate  upon.  Such  real  "  solution  "  of  the  great  problem  as 
is  possible  probably  must  lie  in  the  very  slow  outworking  of  forces 
but  feebly  responsive  to  conscious  social  control  or  direction. 

Where  there  is  so  much  diametrical  opposition  of  views,  where 
feeling  is  likely  to  run  so  high,  where  there  is  oversensitiveness 
to  discussion,  where  differences  of  tradition,  economic  interest, 
and  point  of  view  are  so  great  as  between  the  average  North 
and  the  average  South,  or  between  the  advocates  of  equality 
(however  it  be  defined)  and  those  of  caste,  perhaps  the  best 
thing  to  do  with  the  race  question  is  to  avoid  talking  about  it. 
But  inasmuch  as  it  will  be  discussed  and  is  being  discussed,  as 
the  literature  of  the  problem  keeps  piling  up,  as  men  and  women 


16  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

will  form  opinions,  take  standpoints,  be  guided  by  sentiment  pro 
or  con,  and  as  opinions  will  be  formed  in  a  biased  or  unbiased 
manner,  dogmatically  or  open-mindedly,  it  seems  the  best  course 
to  acquaint  oneself  with  as  many  viewpoints  as  possible,  do  what 
one  can  to  sift  fact  from  prejudice,  recognize  the  stubbornness  of 
facts,  and  form  one's  own  judgments  as  to  social  expediency  and 
social  justice  accordingly.  Ultimately  we  can  afford  to  pin  our 
faith  to  what  in  the  long  run  seems  most  likely  to  substitute 
truth  for  error,  joy  of  living  for  fear  of  living,  peace  for  suspicion 
and  strife,  reason  for  preconception  and  passion,  and  "beauty  for 
ashes."  Whether  the  race  that  finally  inherits  the  earth  shall  be 
black  or  white,  yellow  or  mongrel,  can  be  left  to  destiny.  The 
biologist  and  the  economist  will  rest  assured  in  the  faith  that  it 
will  be  the  strongest,  if  not  the  best,  race. 


BOOK  I 
PROBLEMS  OF  POPULATION 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY 

The  theory  of  Malthus,  18.  —  The  fundamental  principles,  20.  —  The  checks 
to  population,  26. —  Moral  restraint,  44.  —  The  effects  of  moral  restraint,  51. 
—  Improvement  of  the  condition  of  the  poor  through  moral  restraint,  59.  — 
Objections  considered,  65.  —  The  responsibility  of  government,  69.  —  Rational 
expectations  of  the  future  improvement  of  society,  72. 

[A  population  theory  is  a  body  of  reasoned  thought,  based  so 
far  as  the  state  of  knowledge  permits,  upon  known  facts,  with 
regard  to  the  motives  and  causes  which,  in  the  absence  of  con- 
scious individual  direction  or  social  control,  govern  the  perpetu- 
ation and  the  increase  of  the  human  species.  Such  a  theory  may 
give  primary  emphasis  to  biological,  to  economic,  to  psychic,  or 
to  social  forces,  but  it  will  not  be  a  theory  which  approaches 
the  truth  nearly  unless  it  recognizes  and  tries  to  give  due  weight 
to  all  these  factors.  A  population  theory,  moreover,  will  be  a 
mere  academic  exercise  unless  it  attempts  to  show  the  ethical 
implications  and  results  of  the  outworking  of  unguided  natural 
forces  and  tendencies,  and  offers  some  practical  suggestion  for 
obviating  undesirable  and  detrimental  results,  either  through  en- 
couraging in  the  individual  an  intelligent  and  informed  sense  of 
social  responsibility,  or  through  the  development  of  a  more  or 
less  authoritative  social  control  over  population  growth.  When 
the  need  to  regulate  population  —  either  to  stimulate  or  to  retard 
growth  —  becomes  consciously  recognized  by  a  people  or  by  their 
leaders,  the  measures  adopted  or  recommended  for  the  accom- 
plishment of  this  practical  end  constitute  a  population  policy. 

17 


1 8  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Every  policy  rests  upon  some  sort  of  theory,  however  crude, 
superficial,  or  traditional. 

Population  policies,  inrooted  in  the  traditions  and  mores  of 
all  peoples,  based  upon  the  early,  primitive  needs  of  the  tribal 
group,  for  numerical  strength,  for  warriors,  for  males  to  carry 
on  the  religious  rites,  are  seemingly  as  old  as  custom  itself.  The 
biblical  admonition  to  be  fruitful  and  replenish  the  earth  is  an 
ethical  injunction,  a  population  policy,  the  counterpart  of  which 
is  to  be  found  in  nearly  every  religion,  primitive  or  historical. 
The  constant  decimation  occasioned  by  wars  and  proscriptions, 
the  greed  of  conquest,  the  desire  for  cheap  labor,  —  all  join  with 
religious  tradition  to  develop  and  perpetuate  a  policy  based  upon 
the  idea  that  the  wealth  and  welfare  of  a  group  or  a  nation  de- 
pend primarily  upon  its  large  size  and  the  rapidity  of  its  growth 
in  numbers.  Through  primitive  times,  through  the  checkered 
history  of  Greece  and  Rome,  through  the  Protestant  Reforma- 
tion, and  through  the  economic  and  political  doctrines  of  the 
Mercantilists  and  Cameralists,  this  idea  has  been  handed  down 
to  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  is  even  the  prevalent 
idea  to-day.  Some  few  writers  before  Malthus  had  pointed  out 
the  danger  of  population  increase  in  view  of  the  limited  possi- 
bilities of  food  supply,  but  they  made  little  or  no  impression 
because  social  and  economic  conditions  were  not  ripe  for  the 
force  of  their  views  to  be  felt.  Moreover,  Malthus  was  the  first 
to  go  at  the  question  in  a  thorough  and  scientific  manner. 

He  published  his  "  Essay  on  the  Principle  of  Population," 
anonymously,  in  1798.  It  was  an  outgrowth  of  much  discussion 
between  Malthus  and  his  father  over  the  communistic  and  per- 
fectionist speculations  of  William  Godwin  and  Condorcet,  both 
of  whom,  the  one  in  England,  the  other  in  France,  were  arguing 
for  human  perfectibility.  Godwin,  especially,  had  indulged  in 
wild  speculations  as  to  the  happiness,  the  goodness,  and  even 
the  earthly  immortality  of  man,  if  only  government  and  private 
property,  and  with  them  their  baneful  influence,  could  be  abol- 
ished. We  might  suppose  that  Malthus,  then  a  young  curate, 
would  have  been  in  sympathy  with  these  dreams  of  peace  and 
plenty,  but  he  was  also  a  student  of  the  then  new  science  of 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  19 

political  economy,  and  he  saw  at  once  that  the  communists  had 
failed  to  understand  or  to  take  account  of  the  relations  between 
population  and  subsistence.  The  first  edition  of  the  Essay  was 
accordingly  essentially  a  polemic  against  socialism.  His  ideas 
were  stated  in  all  the  hard  and  rigid  form  of  cold,  deductive 
logic.  Population  always  "  presses  upon  "  subsistence ;  war, 
famine,  misery,  and  vice  are  therefore  inevitable,  in  the  future 
as  in  the  past,  and  socialist  dreamings  of  abolishing  poverty  are 
mere  moonshine.  It  is  true  that  prudential  restraint  and  stand- 
ards of  living  receive  some  attention  in  the  first  edition,  but 
Malthus  does  not  expect  much  from  them.1  Prudential  restraint 
itself,  he  thinks,  leads  to  extramarital  vice,  and  he  holds  out  no 
particular  hope  that  the  standards  of  living  of  the  working  classes 
can  be  raised  in  such  a  way  that  the  excessive  birth  rate  will  be 
reduced.  His  book  met  with  a  storm  of  opposition,  especially 
from  the  clergy,  as  well  as  commendation  from  the  orthodox 
political  economists.  Malthus  held  his  peace  for  five  years,  and 
in  1803  published  the  second  edition  of  the  Essay,  very  much 
revised  and  enlarged.  He  had  in  the  meantime  gathered  a  large 
mass  of  data  from  various  countries,  and  he  had  changed  his 
views  with  regard  to  the  efficacy  of  the  prudential  check,  now 
holding  that  it  need  not  involve  vice,  and  that  the  condition 
of  the  laboring  classes  could  be  improved  by  preaching  moral 
restraint  to  them,  and  in  that  way  only.  Malthus  has  always 
been  accused,  chiefly  by  those  who  have  not  read  his  work,  of 
pessimism  and  of  heartlessness  toward  the  working  classes. 
That  this  is  an  entirely  unfair  interpretation  of  his  position  will 
be  apparent  to  any  reader  of  his  chapter  on  "the  only  effectual 
mode  of  improving  the  condition  of  the  poor."] 

1  On  Malthus's  distinction  between  prudential  and  moral  checks,  see  footnote, 
p.  29. 


20  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

1.  STATEMENT  OF  THE  SUBJECT;  RATIOS  OF  THE  INCREASE 
OF  POPULATION  AND  FOOD;  CHECKS  TO  POPULATION1 

In  an  inquiry  concerning  the  improvement  of  society,  the  mode 
of  conducting  the  subject  which  naturally  presents  itself  is  — 

1.  To  investigate  the  causes  that  have  hitherto  impeded  the 
progress  of  mankind  towards  happiness  ;  and 

2.  To  examine  the  probability  of  the  total  or  partial  removal 
of  these  causes  in  future. 

To  enter  fully  into  this  question,  and  to  enumerate  all  the 
causes  that  have  hitherto  influenced  human  improvement,  would 
be  much  beyond  the  power  of  an  individual.  The  principal  object 
of  the  present  essay  is  to  examine  the  effects  of  one  great  cause 
intimately  united  with  the  very  nature  of  man ;  which,  though  it 
has  been  constantly  and  powerfully  operating  since  the  commence- 
ment of  society,  has  been  little  noticed  by  the  writers  who  have 
treated  this  subject.  The  facts  which  establish  the  existence  of 
this  cause  have,  indeed,  been  repeatedly  stated  and  acknowledged  ; 
but  its  natural  and  necessary  effects  have  been  almost  totally 
overlooked  ;  though  probably  among  these  effects  may  be  reck- 
oned a  very  considerable  portion  of  that  vice  and  misery,  and  of 
that  unequal  distribution  of  the  bounties  of  nature,  which  it  has 
been  the  unceasing  object  of  the  enlightened  philanthropist  in 
all  ages  to  correct. 

The  cause  to  which  I  allude  is  the  constant  tendency  in  all 
animated  life  to  increase  beyond  the  nourishment  prepared  for  it. 

It  is  observed  by  Dr.  Franklin  that  there  is  no  bound  to  the 
prolific  nature  of  plants  or  animals  but  what  is  made  by  their 
crowding  and  interfering  with  each  other's  means  of  subsistence. 
Were  the  face  of  the  earth,  he  says,  vacant  of  other  plants,  it 
might  be  gradually  sowed  and  overspread  with  one  kind  only,  as, 
for  instance,  with  fennel  :  and  were  it  empty  of  other  inhabitants, 
it  might  in  a  few  ages  be  replenished  from  one  nation  only,  as, 
for  instance,  with  Englishmen.2 

1  By  T.  R.  Malthus.    From  An  Essay  on  the  Principle  of  Population,  Qth  edi- 
tion, pp.  1-13.     London,  iSSS. 

2  Franklin's  Miscell.,  p.  9. 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  21 

This  is  incontrovertibly  true.  Throughout  the  animal  and 
vegetable  kingdoms  Nature  has  scattered  the  seeds  of  life  abroad 
with  the  most  profuse  and  liberal  hand ;  but  has  been  compara- 
tively sparing  in  the  room  and  the  nourishment  necessary  to  rear 
them.  The  germs  of  existence  contained  in  this  earth,  if  they 
could  freely  develop  themselves,  would  fill  millions  of  worlds  in, 
the  course  of  a  few  thousand  years.  Necessity,  that  imperious, 
all-pervading  law  of  nature,  restrains  them  within  the  prescribed 
bounds.  The  race  of  plants  and  the  race  of  animals  shrink 
under  this  great  restrictive  law ;  and  man  cannot  by  any  efforts 
of  reason  escape  from  it. 

In  plants  and  irrational  animals,  the  view  of  the  subject  is 
simple.  They  are  all  impelled  by  a  powerful  instinct  to  the 
increase  of  their  species,  and  this  instinct  is  interrupted  by  no 
doubts  about  providing  for  their  offspring.  Wherever,  therefore, 
there  is  liberty,  the  power  of  increase  is  exerted,  and  the  super- 
abundant effects  are  repressed  afterwards  by  want  of  room  and 
nourishment. 

The  effects  of  this  check  on  man  are  more  complicated.  Im- 
pelled to  the  increase  of  his  species  by  an  equally  powerful 
instinct,  reason  interrupts  his  career,  and  asks  him  whether  he 
may  not  bring  beings  into  the  world  for  whom  he  cannot  provide 
the  means  of  support.  If  he  attend  to  this  natural  suggestion,  the 
restriction  too  frequently  produces  vice.  If  he  hear  it  not,  the 
human  race  will  be  constantly  endeavoring  to  increase  beyond 
the  means  of  subsistence.  But  as,  by  that  law  of  our  nature 
which  makes  food  necessary  to  the  life  of  man,  population  can 
never  actually  increase  beyond  the  lowest  nourishment  capable  of 
supporting  it,  a  strong  check  on  population,  from  the  difficulty 
of  acquiring  food,  must  be  constantly  in  operation.  This  difficulty 
must  fall  somewhere,  and  must  necessarily  be  severely  felt  in 
some  or  other  of  the  various  forms  of  misery,  or  the  fear  of 
misery,  by  a  large  portion  of  mankind. 

That  population  has  this  constant  tendency  to  increase  beyond 
the  means  of  subsistence,  and  that  it  is  kept  to  its  necessary 
level  by  these  causes,  will  sufficiently  appear  from  a  review  of 
the  different  states  of  society  in  which  man  has  existed.  But, 


22  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

before  we  proceed  to  this  review,  the  subject  will  perhaps  be  seen 
in  a  clearer  light,  if  we  endeavor  to  ascertain  what  would  be  the 
natural  increase  of  population,  if  left  to  exert  itself  with  perfect 
freedom  ;  and  what  might  be  expected  to  be  the  rate  of  increase 
in  the  productions  of  the  earth,  under  the  most  favorable  circum- 
stances of  human  industry. 

It  will  be  allowed  that  no  country  has  hitherto  been  known, 
where  the  manners  were  so  pure  and  simple,  and  the  means  of 
subsistence  so  abundant,  that  no  check  whatever  has  existed 
to  early  marriages  from  the  difficulty  of  providing  for  a  family, 
and  that  no  waste  of  the  human  species  has  been  occasioned  by 
vicious  customs,  by  towns,  by  unhealthy  occupations,  or  too  severe 
labor.  Consequently  in  no  state  that  we  have  yet  known,  has  the 
power  of  population  been  left  to  exert  itself  with  perfect  freedom. 

Whether  the  law  of  marriage  be  instituted  or  not,  the  dictate 
of  nature  and  virtue  seems  to  be  an  early  attachment  to  one 
woman  ;  and  where  there  were  no  impediments  of  any  kind  in 
the  way  of  a  union  to  which  such  an  attachment  would  lead,  and 
no  causes  of  depopulation  afterwards,  the  increase  of  the  human 
species  would  be  evidently  much  greater  than  any  increase  which 
has  been  hitherto  known. 

In  the  northern  states  of  America,  where  the  means  of  sub- 
sistence have  been  more  ample,  the  manners  of  the  people  more 
pure,  and  the  checks  to  early  marriages  fewer,  than  in  any  of  the 
modern  states  of  Europe,  the  population  has  been  found  to  double 
itself,  for  above  a  century  and  a  half  successively,  in  less  than 
twenty-five  years.1  Yet,  even  during  these  periods,  in  some  of  the 
towns,  the  deaths  exceeded  the  births,2  a  circumstance  which 
clearly  proves  that,  in  those  parts  of  the  country  which  supplied 
this  deficiency,  the  increase  must  have  been  much  more  rapid 
than  the  general  average. 

In  the  back  settlements,  where  the  sole  employment  is  agricul- 
ture, and  vicious  customs  and  unwholesome  occupations  are  little 

1  It  appears,  from  some  recent  calculations  and  estimates,  that  from  the  first 
settlement  of  America  to  the  year  1800  the  periods  of  doubling  have  been  but 
very  little  above  twenty  years. 

2  Price,  Observ.  on  Revers.  Pay.,  Vol.  I,  p.  274,  4th  edition. 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  23 

known,  the  population  has  been  found  to  double  itself  in  fifteen 
years.1  Even  this  extraordinary  rate  of  increase  is  probably  short 
of  the  utmost  power  of  population.  Very  severe  labor  is  requisite 
to  clear  a  fresh  country ;  such  situations  are  not  in  general  con- 
sidered as  particularly  healthy ;  and  the  inhabitants,  probably,  are 
occasionally  subject  to  the  incursions  of  the  Indians,  which  may 
destroy  some  lives,  or  at  any  rate  diminish  the  fruits  of  industry. 

According  to  a  table  of  Euler,  calculated  on  a  mortality  of  I  in 
36,  if  the  births  be  to  the  deaths  in  the  proportion  of  3  to  I,  the 
period  of  doubling  will  be  only  twelve  years  and  four  fifths.  And 
this  proportion  is  not  only  a  possible  supposition,  but  has  actually 
occurred  for  short  periods  in  more  countries  than  one. 

Sir  William  Petty  supposes  a  doubling  possible  in  so  short  a 
time  as  ten  years.2 

But,  to  be  perfectly  sure  that  we  are  far  within  the  truth,  we 
will  take  the  slowest  of  these  rates  of  increase,  a  rate  in  which 
all  concurring  testimonies  agree,  and  which  has  been  repeatedly 
ascertained  to  be  from  procreation  only. 

It  may  safely  be  pronounced,  therefore,  that  population,  when 
unchecked,  goes  on  doubling  itself  every  twenty-five  years,  or 
increases  in  a  geometrical  ratio. 

The  rate  according  to  which  the  productions  of  the  earth  may 
be  supposed  to  increase,  will  not  be  so  easy  to  determine.  Of 
this,  however,  we  may  be  perfectly  certain,  that  the  ratio  of  their 
increase  in  a  limited  territory  must  be  of  a  totally  different  nature 
from  the  ratio  of  the  increase  of  population.  A  thousand  millions 
are  just  as  easily  doubled  every  twenty-five  years  by  the  power  of 
population  as  a  thousand.  But  the  food  to  support  the  increase 
from  the  greater  number  will  by  no  means  be  obtained  with  the 
same  facility.  Man  is  necessarily  confined  in  room.  When  acre 
has  been  added  to  acre  till  all  the  fertile  land  is  occupied,  the 
yearly  increase  of  food  must  depend  upon  the  melioration  of  the 
land  already  in  possession.  This  is  a  fund,  which,  from  the  nature 
of  all  soils,  instead  of  increasing,  must  be  gradually  diminishing. 
But  population,  could  it  be  supplied  with  food,  would  go  on  with 

1  Price,  Observ.  on  Revers.  Pay.,  Vol.  I,  p.  282,  4th  edition. 
"  Polit.  Arith.,  p.  14. 


24  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

unexhausted  vigor ;  and  the  increase  of  one  period  would  furnish 
the  power  of  a  greater  increase  the  next,  and  this  without  any  limit. 

From  the  accounts  we  have  of  China  and  Japan,  it  may  be 
fairly  doubted,  whether  the  best  directed  efforts  of  human  industry 
could  double  the  produce  of  these  countries  even  once  in  any 
number  of  years.  There  are  many  parts  of  the  globe,  indeed, 
hitherto  uncultivated  and  almost  unoccupied  ;  but  the  right  of 
exterminating,  or  driving  into  a  corner  where  they  must  starve, 
even  the  inhabitants  of  these  thinly  peopled  regions,  will  be 
questioned  in  a  moral  view.  The  process  of  improving  their 
minds  and  directing  their  industry  would  necessarily  be  slow  ; 
and  during  this  time,  as  population  would  regularly  keep  pace 
with  the  increasing  produce,  it  would  rarely  happen  that  a  great 
degree  of  knowledge  and  industry  would  have  to  operate  at  once 
upon  rich  unappropriated  soil.  Even  where  this  might  take  place, 
as  it  does  sometimes  in  new  colonies,  a  geometrical  ratio  increases 
with  such  extraordinary  rapidity,  that  the  advantage  could  not  last 
long.  If  the  United  States  of  America  continue  increasing,  which 
they  certainly  will  do,  though  not  with  the  same  rapidity  as 
formerly,  the  Indians  will  be  driven  farther  and  farther  back  into 
the  country,  till  the  whole  race  is  ultimately  exterminated,  and 
the  territory  is  incapable  of  further  extension. 

These  observations  are,  in  a  degree,  applicable  to  all  the  parts 
of  the  earth  where  the  soil  is  imperfectly  cultivated.  To  exter- 
minate the  inhabitants  of  the  greatest  part  of  Asia  and  Africa  is 
a  thought  that  could  not  be  admitted  for  a  moment.  To  civilize 
and  direct  the  industry  of  the  various  tribes  of  Tartars  and 
Negroes  would  certainly  be  a  work  of  considerable  time,  and  of 
variable  and  uncertain  success. 

Europe  is  by  no  means  so  fully  peopled  as  it  might  be.  In 
Europe  there  is  the  fairest  chance  that  human  industry  may 
receive  its  best  direction.  The  science  of  agriculture  has  been 
much  studied  in  England  and  Scotland  ;  and  there  is  still  a  great 
portion  of  uncultivated  land  in  these  countries.  Let  us  consider 
at  what  rate  the  produce  of  this  island  (Great  Britain)  might  be 
supposed  to  increase  under  circumstances  the  most  favorable  to 
improvement. 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  25 

If  it  be  allowed  that  by  the  best  possible  policy,  and  great  en- 
couragements to  agriculture,  the  average  produce  of  the  island 
could  be  doubled  in  the  first  twenty-five  years,  it  will  be  allowing, 
probably,  a  greater  increase  than  could  with  reason  be  expected. 

In  the  next  twenty-five  years,  it  is  impossible  to  suppose  that 
the  produce  could  be  quadrupled.  It  would  be  contrary  to  all  our 
knowledge  of  the  properties  of  land.  The  improvement  of  the 
barren  parts  would  be  a  work  of  time  and  labor ;  and  it  must  be 
evident  to  those  who  have  the  slightest  acquaintance  with  agri- 
cultural subjects,  that  in  proportion  as  cultivation  extended,  the 
additions  that  could  yearly  be  made  to  the  former  average  produce 
must  be  gradually  and  regularly  diminishing.  That  we  may  be 
the  better  able  to  compare  the  increase  of  population  and  food, 
let  us  make  a  supposition,  which,  without  pretending  to  accuracy, 
is  clearly  more  favorable  to  the  power  of  production  in  the  earth 
than  any  experience  we  have  had  of  its  qualities  will  warrant. 

Let  us  suppose  that  the  yearly  additions  which  might  be  made 
to  the  former  average  produce,  instead  of  decreasing,  which  they 
certainly  would  do,  were  to  remain  the  same ;  and  that  the 
produce  of  this  island  might  be  increased  every  twenty-five  years, 
by  a  quantity  equal  to  what  it  at  present  produces.  The  most 
enthusiastic  speculator  cannot  suppose  a  greater  increase  than 
this.  In  a  few  centuries  it  would  make  every  acre  of  land  in  the 
island  like  a  garden. 

If  this  supposition  be  applied  to  the  whole  earth,  and  if  it  be 
allowed  that  the  subsistence  for  man  which  the  earth  affords  might 
be  increased  every  twenty-five  years  by  a  quantity  equal  to  what 
it  at  present  produces,  this  will  be  supposing  a  rate  of  increase 
much  greater  than  we  can  imagine  that  any  possible  exertions  of 
mankind  could  make  it. 

It  may  be  fairly  pronounced,  therefore,  that  considering  the 
present  average  state  of  the  earth,  the  means  of  subsistence,  under 
circumstances  the  most  favorable  to  human  industry,  could  not 
possibly  be  made  to  increase  faster  than  in  an  arithmetical  ratio. 

The  necessary  effects  of  these  two  different  rates  of  increase, 
when  brought  together,  will  be  very  striking.  Let  us  call  the 
population  of  this  island  eleven  millions  ;  and  suppose  the  present 


26  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

produce  equal  to  the  easy  support  of  such  a  number.  In  the  first 
twenty-five  years  the  population  would  be  twenty-two  millions,  and 
the  food  being  also  doubled,  the  means  of  subsistence  would  be 
equal  to  this  increase.  In  the  next  twenty-five  years,  the  popula- 
tion would  be  forty-four  millions,  and  the  means  of  subsistence 
only  equal  to  the  support  of  thirty-three  millions.  In  the  next 
period  the  population  would  be  eighty-eight  millions,  and  the  means 
of  subsistence  just  equal  to  the  support  of  half  that  number.  And, 
at  the  conclusion  of  the  first  century,  the  population  would  be  a 
hundred  and  seventy-six  millions,  and  the  means  of  subsistence 
only  equal  to  the  support  of  fifty-five  millions,  leaving  population 
of  a  hundred  and  twenty-one  millions  totally  unprovided  for. 

Taking  the  whole  earth,  instead  of  this  island,  emigration  would 
of  course  be  excluded  ;  and,  supposing  the  present  population 
equal  to  a  thousand  millions,  the  human  species  would  increase 
as  the  numbers,  I,  2,  4,  8,  16,  32,  64,  128,  256;  and  subsist- 
ence as,  I,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  8,  9.  In  two  centuries  the  popula- 
tion would  be  to  the  means  of  subsistence  as  256  to  9  ;  in  three 
centuries  as  4096  to  13,  and  in  two  thousand  years  the  difference 
would  be  almost  incalculable. 

In  this  supposition  no  limits  whatever  are  placed  to  the  produce 
of  the  earth.  It  may  increase  forever,  and  be  greater  than  any 
assignable  quantity ;  yet  still  the  power  of  population  being  in 
every  period  so  much  superior,  the  increase  of  the  human  species 
can  only  be  kept  down  to  the  level  of  the  means  of  subsistence 
by  the  constant  operation  of  the  strong  law  of  necessity  acting  as 
a  check  upon  the  greater  power. 

OF  THE  GENERAL  CHECKS  TO  POPULATION,  AND  THE  MODE 
OF  THEIR  OPERATION 

The  ultimate  check  to  population  appears  then  to  be  a  want  of 
food,  arising  necessarily  from  the  different  ratios  according  to 
which  population  and  food  increase.  But  this  ultimate  check  is 
never  the  immediate  check,  except  in  cases  of  actual  famine. 

The  immediate  check  may  be  stated  to  consist  in  all  those 
customs,  and  all  those  diseases,  which  seem  to  be  generated  by 
a  scarcity  of  the  means  of  subsistence ;  and  all  those  causes, 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  27 

independent  of  this  scarcity,  whether  of  a  moral  or  physical  nature, 
which  tend  prematurely  to  weaken  and  destroy  the  human  frame. 

These  checks  to  population,  which  are  constantly  operating  with 
more  or  less  force  in  every  society,  and  keep  down  the  number 
to  the  level  of  the  means  of  subsistence,  may  be  classed  under 
two  general  heads  —  the  preventive  and  the  positive  checks. 

The  preventive  check,  as  far  as  it  is  voluntary,  is  peculiar  to 
man,  and  arises  from  that  distinctive  superiority  in  his  reasoning 
faculties  which  enables  him  to  calculate  distant  consequences. 
The  checks  to  the  indefinite  increase  of  plants  and  irrational 
animals  are  all  either  positive  or,  if  preventive,  involuntary.  But 
man  cannot  look  around  him,  and  see  the  distress  which  fre- 
quently presses  upon  those  who  have  large  families  ;  he  cannot 
contemplate  his  present  possessions  or  earnings,  which  he  now 
nearly  consumes  himself,  and  calculate  the  amount  of  each  share, 
when  with  very  little  addition  they  must  be  divided,  perhaps, 
among  seven  or  eight,  without  feeling  a  doubt  whether,  if  he 
follow  the  bent  of  his  inclinations,  he  may  be  able  to  support  the 
offspring  which  he  will  probably  bring  into  the  world.  In  a  state 
of  equality,  if  such  can  exist,  this  would  be  the  simple  question. 
In  the  present  state  of  society  other  considerations  occur.  Will 
he  not  lower  his  rank  in  life,  and  be  obliged  to  give  up  in  great 
measure  his  former  habits  ?  Does  any  mode  of  employment 
present  itself  by  which  he  may  reasonably  hope  to  maintain  a 
family  ?  Will  he  not  at  any  rate  subject  himself  to  greater  diffi- 
culties, and  more  severe  labor  than  in  his  single  state  ?  Will  he 
not  be  unable  to  transmit  to  his  children  the  same  advantages  of 
education  and  improvement  that  he  had  himself  possessed  ?  Does 
he  even  feel  secure  that,  should  he  have  a  large  family,  his  utmost 
exertions  can  save  them  from  rags  and  squalid  poverty,  and  their 
consequent  degradation  in  the  community  ?  And  may  he  not  be 
reduced  to  the  grating  necessity  of  forfeiting  his  independence, 
and  of  being  obliged  to  the  sparing  hand  of  charity  for  support  ? 

These  considerations  are  calculated  to  prevent,  and  certainly  do 
prevent,  a  great  number  of  persons  in  all  civilized  nations  from 
pursuing  the  dictate  of  nature  in  an  early  attachment  to  one 
woman. 


2xS  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

If  this  restraint  do  not  produce  vice,  it  is  undoubtedly  the  least 
evil  that  can  arise  from  the  principle  of  population.  Considered 
as  a  restraint  on  a  strong  natural  inclination,  it  must  be  allowed 
to  produce  a  certain  degree  of  temporary  unhappiness  ;  but  evi- 
dently slight,  compared  with  the  evils  which  result  from  any  of 
the  other  checks  to  population  ;  and  merely  of  the  same  nature 
as  many  other  sacrifices  of  temporary  to  permanent  gratification, 
which  it  is  the  business  of  a  moral  agent  continually  to  make. 

When  this  restraint  produces  vice,  the  evils  which  follow  are 
but  too  conspicuous.  A  promiscuous  intercourse  to  such  a  degree 
as  to  prevent  the  birth  of  children,  seems  to  lower,  in  the  most 
marked  manner,  the  dignity  of  human  nature.  It  cannot  be 
without  its  effect  on  men,  and  nothing  can  be  more  obvious  than 
its  tendency  to  degrade  the  female  character,  and  to  destroy  all 
its  most  amiable  and  distinguishing  characteristics.  Add  to  which, 
that  among  those  unfortunate  females  with  which  all  great  towns 
abound,  more  real  distress  and  aggravated  misery  are,  perhaps,  to 
be  found,  than  in  any  other  department  of  human  life. 

When  a  general  corruption  of  morals,  with  regard  to  the  sex, 
pervades  all  the  classes  of  society,  its  effects  must  necessarily  be 
to  poison  the  springs  of  domestic  happiness,  to  weaken  conjugal 
and  parental  affection,  and  to  lessen  the  united  exertions  and 
ardor  of  parents  in  the  care  and  education  of  their  children  ;  — 
effects  which  cannot  take  place  without  a  decided  diminution  of 
the  general  happiness  and  virtue  of  society  ;  particularly  as  the 
necessity  of  art  in  the  accomplishment  and  conduct  of  intrigues, 
and  in  the  concealment  of  their  consequences,  necessarily  leads  to 
many  other  vices. 

The  positive  checks  to  population  are  extremely  various,  and 
include  every  cause,  whether  arising  from  vice  or  misery,  which 
in  any  degree  contributes  to  shorten  the  natural  duration  of  human 
life.  Under  this  head,  therefore,  may  be  enumerated  all  unwhole- 
some occupations,  severe  labor  and  exposure  to  the  seasons,  ex- 
treme poverty,  bad  nursing  of  children,  large  towns,  excesses  of 
all  kinds,  the  whole  train  of  common  diseases  and  epidemics, 
wars,  plague,  and  famine. 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  29 

On  examining  these  obstacles  to  the  increase  of  population 
which  are  classed  under  the  heads  of  preventive  and  positive 
checks,  it  will  appear  that  they  are  all  resolvable  into  moral 
restraint,  vice,  and  misery. 

Of  the  preventive  checks,  the  restraint  from  marriage  which  is 
not  followed  by  irregular  gratifications  may  properly  be  termed 
moral  restraint.1 

Promiscuous  intercourse,  unnatural  passions,  violations  of  the 
marriage  bed,  and  improper  arts  to  conceal  the  consequences  of 
irregular  connection^,  are  preventive  checks  that  clearly  come 
under  the  head  of  vice. 

Of  the  positive  checks,  those  which  appear  to  arise  unavoidably 
from  the  laws  of  nature,  may  be  called  exclusively  misery ;  and 
those  which  we  obviously  bring  upon  ourselves,  such  as  wars, 
excesses,  and  many  others  which  it  would  be  in  our  power  to 
avoid,  are  of  a  mixed  nature.  They  are  brought  upon  us  by  vice, 
and  their  consequences  are  misery.2 

1  It  will  be  observed  that  I  here  use  the  term  moral  in  its  most  confined  sense. 
By  moral  restraint  I  would  be  understood  to  mean  a  restraint  from  marriage  from 
prudential   motives,   with    a   conduct   strictly   moral    during    the    period    of    this 
restraint;    and   I   have   never   intentionally   deviated  from  this   sense.     When   I 
have  wished  to  consider  the  restraint  from  marriage  unconnected  with  its  conse- 
quences, I  have  either  called  it  prudential  restraint  or  a  part  of  the  preventive 
check,  of  which  indeed  it  forms  the  principal  branch. 

In  my  review  of  the  different  stages  of  society  I  have  been  accused  of  not 
allowing  sufficient  weight  in  the  prevention  of  population  to  moral  restraint ;  but 
when  the  confined  sense  of  the  term,  which  I  have  here  explained,  is  adverted 
to,  I  am  fearful  that  I  shall  not  be  found  to  have  erred  much  in  this  respect.  I 
should  be  very  glad  to  believe  myself  mistaken. 

2  As  the  general  consequence  of  vice  is  misery,  and  as  this  consequence  is  the 
precise  reason  why  an  action  is  termed  vicious,  it  may  appear  that  the  term  misery 
alone  would  be  here  sufficient,  and  that  it  is  superfluous'  to  use  both.    P>ut  the 
rejection   of   the   term  vice  would   introduce   a   considerable   confusion   into   our 
language   and   ideas.    We  want  it  particularly  to   distinguish   those   actions   the 
general  tendency  of  which  is  to  produce  misery,  and  which  are  therefore  pro- 
hibited  by   the    commands    of    the    Creator   and   the   precepts    of    the   moralist, 
although,  in  their  immediate   or  individual   effects,  they  may  produce   perhaps 
exactly  the  contrary.    The  gratification  of  all  our  passions  in  its  immediate  effect 
is  happiness,  not  misery  ;  and,  in  individual  instances,  even  the  remote  conse- 
quences (at  least  in  this  life)  may  possibly  come  under  the  same  denomination. 
There  may  have  been  some  irregular  connections  with  women  which  have  added 


30  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

The  sum  of  all  these  preventive  and  positive  checks,  taken 
together,  forms  the  immediate  check  to  population  ;  and  it  is 
evident  that,  in  every  country  where  the  whole  of  the  procreative 
power  cannot  be  called  into  action,  the  preventive  and  the  positive 
checks  must  vary  inversely  as  each  other ;  that  is,  in  countries 
either  naturally  unhealthy,  or  subject  to  a  great  mortality,  from 
whatever  cause  it  may  arise,  the  preventive  check  will  prevail 
very  little.  In  those  countries,  on  the  contrary,  which  are  natur- 
ally healthy,  and  where  the  preventive  check  is  found  to  prevail 
with  considerable  force,  the  positive  check  will  prevail  very  little, 
or  the  mortality  be  very  small. 

In  every  country  some  of  these  checks  are,  with  more  or  less 
force,  in  constant  operation ;  yet,  notwithstanding  their  general 
prevalence,  there  are  few  states  in  which  there  is  not  a  constant 
effort  in  the  population  to  increase  beyond  the  means  of  subsist- 
ence. This  constant  effort  as  constantly  tends  to  subject  the 
lower  classes  of  society  to  distress,  and  to  prevent  any  great 
permanent  melioration  of  their  condition. 

These  effects,  in  the  present  state  of  society,  seem  to  be  pro- 
duced in  the  following  manner.  We  will  suppose  the  means  of 
subsistence  in  any  country  just  equal  to  the  easy  support  of  its 
inhabitants.  The  constant  effort  towards  population,  which  is 
found  to  act  even  in  the  most  vicious  societies,  increases  the 
number  of  people  before  the  means  of  subsistence  are  increased. 
The  food,  therefore,  which  before  supported  eleven  millions,  must 
now  be  divided  among  eleven  millions  and  a  half.  The  poor  con- 
sequently must  live  much  worse,  and  many  of  them  be  reduced 
to  severe  distress.  The  number  of  laborers  also  being  above  the 
proportion  of  work  in  the  market,  the  price  of  labor  must  tend  to 
fall,  while  the  price  of  provisions  would  at  the  same  time  tend  to 
rise.  The  laborer,  therefore,  must  do  more  work  to  earn  the  same 


to  the  happiness  of  both  parties  and  have  injured  no  one.  These  individual 
actions,  therefore,  cannot  come  under  the  head  of  misery.  But  they  are  still 
evidently  vicious,  because  an  action  is  so  denominated  which  violates  an  express 
precept,  founded  upon  its  general  tendency  to  produce  misery,  whatever  may  be 
its  individual  effect ;  and  no  person  can  doubt  the  general  tendency  of  an  illicit 
intercourse  between  the  sexes  to  injure  the  happiness  of  society. 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  31 

as  he  did  before.  During  this  season  of  distress,  the  discourage- 
ments to  marriage  and  the  difficulty  of  rearing  a  family  are  so 
great,  that  the  progress  of  population  is  retarded.  In  the  mean- 
time, the  cheapness  of  labor,  the  plenty  of  laborers,  and  the 
necessity  of  an  increased  industry  among  them,  encourage  culti- 
vators to  employ  more  labor  upon  their  land,  to  turn  up  fresh  soil, 
and  to  manure  and  improve  more  completely  what  is  already  in 
tillage,  till  ultimately  the  means  of  subsistence  may  become  in  the 
same  proportion  to  the  population  as  at  the  period  from  which  we 
set  out.  The  situation  of  the  laborer  being  then  again  tolerably 
comfortable,  the  restraints  to  population  are  in  some  degree 
loosened ;  and,  after  a  short  period,  the  same  retrograde  and 
progressive  movements  with  respect  to  happiness  are  repeated. 

This  sort  of  oscillation  will  not  probably  be  obvious  to  common 
view ;  and  it  may  be  difficult  even  for  the  most  attentive  observer 
to  calculate  its  periods.  Yet  that,  in  the  generality  of  old  states, 
some  alternation  of  this  kind  does  exist,  though  in  a  much  less 
marked,  and  in  a  much  more  irregular  manner,  than  I  have 
described  it,  no  reflecting  man,  who  considers  the  subject  deeply, 
can  well  doubt. 

One  principal  reason  why  this  oscillation  has  been  less  re- 
marked, and  less  decidedly  confirmed  by  experience  than  might 
naturally  be  expected,  is,  that  the  histories  of  mankind  which  we 
possess  are,  in  general,  histories  only  of  the  higher  classes.  We 
have  not  many  accounts  that  can  be  depended  upon,  of  the 
manners  and  customs  of  that  part  of  mankind  where  these  retro- 
grade and  progressive  movements  chiefly  take  place.  A  satis- 
factory history  of  this  kind,  of  one  people  and  of  one  period, 
would  require  the  constant  and  minute  attention  of  many  observ- 
ing minds  in  local  and  general  remarks  on  the  state  of  the  lower 
classes  of  society,  and  the  causes  that  influenced  it ;  and,  to  draw 
accurate  inferences  upon  this  subject,  a  succession  of  such  histor- 
ians for  some  centuries  would  be  necessary.  This  branch  of 
statistical  knowledge  has,  of  late  years,  been  attended  to  in  some 
countries,1  and  we  may  promise  ourselves  a  clearer  insight  into 

1  The  judicious  questions  which  Sir  John  Sinclair  circulated  in  Scotland,  and 
the  valuable  accounts  which  he  has  collected  in  that  part  of  the  island,  do  him 


32  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  internal  structure  of  human  society  from  the  progress  of  these 
inquiries.  But  the  science  may  be  said  yet  to  be  in  its  infancy, 
and  many  of  the  objects  on  which  it  would  be  desirable  to  have 
information,  have  been  either  omitted  or  not  stated  with  sufficient 
accuracy.  Among  these,  perhaps,  may  be  reckoned  the  proportion 
of  the  number  of  adults  to  the  number  of  marriages  ;  the  extent 
to  which  vicious  customs  have  prevailed  in  consequence  of  the 
restraints  upon  matrimony ;  the  comparative  mortality  among  the 
children  of  the  most  distressed  part  of  the  community,  and  of 
those  who  live  rather  more  at  their  ease  ;  the  variations  in  the 
real  price  of  labor ;  the  observable  differences  in  the  state  of  the 
lower  classes  of  society,  with  respect  to  ease  and  happiness,  at 
different  times  during  a  certain  period  ;  and  very  accurate  regis- 
ters of  births,  deaths,  and  marriages,  which  are  of  the  utmost 
importance  in  this  subject. 

A  faithful  history,  including  such  particulars,  would  tend 
greatly  to  elucidate  the  manner  in  which  the  constant  check  upon 
population  acts  ;  and  would  probably  prove  the  existence  of  the 
retrograde  and  progressive  movements  that  have  been  mentioned ; 
though  the  times  of  their  vibration  must  necessarily  be  rendered 
irregular  from  the  operation  of  many  interrupting  causes  ;  such 
as,  the  introduction  or  failure  of  certain  manufactures  ;  a  greater 
or  less  prevalent  spirit  of  agricultural  enterprise  ;  years  of  plenty, 
or  years  of  scarcity  ;  wars,  sickly  seasons,  poor  laws,  emigrations, 
and  other  causes  of  a  similar  nature. 

the  highest  honor ;  and  these  accounts  will  ever  remain  an  extraordinary  monu- 
ment of  the  learning,  good  sense,  and  general  information  of  the  clergy  of 
Scotland.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  adjoining  parishes  are  not  put  together 
in  the  work,  which  would  have  assisted  the  memory  both  in  attaining  and  recol- 
lecting the  state  of  particular  districts.  The  repetitions  and  contradictory  opinions 
which  occur  are  not,  in  my  opinion,  so  objectionable  ;  as  to  the  result  of  such 
testimony,  more  faith  may  be  given  than  we  could  possibly  give  to  the  testimony 
of  any  individual.  Even  were  this  result  drawn  for  us  by  some  master  hand, 
though  much  valuable  time  would  undoubtedly  be  saved,  the  information  would 
not  be  so  satisfactory.  If,  with  a  few  subordinate  improvements,  this  work  had 
contained  accurate  and  complete  registers  for  the  last  one  hundred  and  fifty  years, 
it  would  have  been  inestimable,  and  would  have  exhibited  a  better  picture  of  the 
internal  state  of  a  country  than  has  yet  been  presented  to  the  world.  But  this  last 
most  essential"  improvement  no  diligence  could  have  effected. 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  33 

A  circumstance  which  has,  perhaps,  more  than  any  other,  con- 
tributed to  conceal  this  oscillation  from  common  view,  is  the 
difference  between  the  nominal  and  real  price  of  labor.  It  very 
rarely  happens  that  the  nominal  price  of  labor  universally  falls ; 
but  we  well  know  that  it  frequently  remains  the  same,  while  the 
nominal  price  of  provisions  has  been  gradually  rising.  This, 
indeed,  will  generally  be  the  case,  if  the  increase  of  manufactures 
and  commerce  be  sufficient  to  employ  the  new  laborers  that  are 
thrown  into  the  market,  and  to  prevent  the  increased  supply 
from  lowering  the  money-price.1  But  an  increased  number  of 
laborers  receiving  the  same  money-wages  will  necessarily,  by  their 
competition,  increase  the  money-price  of  corn.  This  is,  in  fact, 
a  real  fall  in  the  price  of  labor ;  and,  during  this  period,  the 
condition  of  the  lower  classes  of  the  community  must  be  gradu- 
ally growing  worse.  But  the  farmers  and  capitalists  are  growing 
rich  from  the  real  cheapness  of  labor.  Their  increasing  capitals 
enable  them  to  employ  a  greater  number  of  men  ;  and,  as  the 
population  had  probably  suffered  some  check  from  the  greater 
difficulty  of  supporting  a  family,  the  demand  for  labor,  after  a 
certain  period,  would  be  great  in  proportion  to  the  supply,  and  its 
price  would  of  course  rise,  if  left  to  find  its  natural  level ;  and 
thus  the  wages  of  labor,  and  consequently  the  condition  of  the 
lower  classes  of  society,  might  have  progressive  and  retrograde 
movements,  though  the  price  of  labor  might  never  nominally  fall. 

In  savage  life,  where  there  is  no  regular  price  of  labor,  it  is 
little  to  be  doubted  that  similar  oscillations  take  place.  When 
population  has  increased  nearly  to  the  utmost  limits  of  the  food, 
all  the  preventive  and  the  positive  checks  will  naturally  operate 
with  increased  force.  Vicious  habits  with  respect  to  the  sex  will 
be  more  general,  the  exposing  of  children  more  frequent,  and 
both  the  probability  and  fatality  of  wars  and  epidemics  will  be 

1  If  the  new  laborers  thrown  yearly  into  the  market  should  find  no  employment 
but  in  agriculture,  their  competition  might  so  lower  the  money-price  of  labor  as  to 
prevent  the  increase  of  population  from  occasioning  an  effective  demand  for 
more  corn  ;  or,  in  other  words,  if  the  landlords  and  farmers  could  get  nothing  but 
an  additional  quantity  of  agricultural  labor  in  exchange  for  any  additional  produce 
which  they  could  raise,  they  might  not  be  tempted  to  raise  it. 


34  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

considerably  greater ;  and  these  causes  will  probably  continue 
their  operation  till  the  population  is  sunk  below  the  level  of  the 
food ;  and  then  the  return  to  comparative  plenty  will  again 
produce  an  increase,  and,  after  a  certain  period,  its  further 
progress  will  again  be  checked  by  the  same  causes.1 

But  without  attempting  to  establish  these  progressive  and  retro- 
grade movements  in  different  countries,  which  would  evidently 
require  more  minute  histories  than  we  possess,  and  which  the 
progress  of  civilization  naturally  tends  to  counteract,  the  following 
propositions  are  intended  to  be  proved : 

1 .  Population  is  necessarily  limited  by  the  means  of  subsistence. 

2.  Population   invariably  increases  where   the   means   of   sub- 
sistence increase,  unless  prevented  by  some  very  powerful  and 
obvious  checks.2 

3.  These  checks,  and  the  checks  which  repress  the  superior 
power  of  population,  and  keep   its   effects  on  a  level  with  the 
means  of  subsistence,  are  all  resolvable  into  moral  restraint,  vice, 
and  misery. 

The  first  of  these  propositions  scarcely  needs  illustration.  The 
second  and  third  will  be  sufficiently  established  by  a  review  of 
the  immediate  checks  to  population  in  the  past  and  present  state 
of  society. 

1  Sir  James  Stuart  very  justly  compares  the  generative  faculty  to  a  spring 
loaded  with  a  variable  weight  (Polit.  Econ.,  Vol.  I,  Bk.  I,  chap,  iv,  p.  20),  which 
would  of  course  produce  exactly  that  kind  of  oscillation  which  has  been  men- 
tioned.   In  the  first  book  of  his  Political  Economy,  he  has  explained  many  parts 
of  the  subject  of  population  very  ably. 

2  I  have  expressed  myself  in  this  cautious  manner,  because  I  believe  there  are 
some  instances  where  population  does  not  keep  up  to  the  level  of  the  means  of 
subsistence.    But  these  are  extreme  cases ;  and,  generally  speaking,  it  might  be 
said  that 

1.  Population  is  necessarily  limited  by  the  means  of  subsistence. 

2.  Population  always  increases  where  the  means  of  subsistence  increase. 

3.  The  checks  which  repress  the  superior  power  of  population,  and  keep  its 
effect  on  a  level  with  the  means  of  subsistence,  are  all  resolvable  into  moral 
restraint,  vice,  and  misery. 

It  should  be  observed  that  by  an  increase  in  the  means  of  subsistence  is  here 
meant  such  an  increase  as  will  enable  the  mass  of  the  society  to  command  more 
food.  An  increase  might  certainly  take  place  which  in  the  actual  state  of  a 
particular  society  would  not  be  distributed  to  the  lower  classes,  and  consequently 
would  give  no  stimulus  to  population. 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  35 

2.  GENERAL  DEDUCTIONS  FROM  THE  PRECEDING 
VIEW  OF  SOCIETY1 

That  the  checks  which  have  been  mentioned  are  the  immediate 
causes  of  the  slow  increase  of  population,  and  that  these  checks 
result  principally  from  an  insufficiency  of  subsistence,  will  be 
evident  from  the  comparatively  rapid  increase  which  has  invari- 
ably taken  place,  whenever,  by  some  sudden  enlargement  in  the 
means  of  subsistence,  these  checks  have  in  any  considerable 
degree  been  removed. 

It  has  been  universally  remarked  that  all  new  colonies  settled 
in  healthy  countries,  where  room  and  food  were  abundant,  have 
constantly  made  a  rapid  progress  in  population.  ...  Not  to 
dwell  on  remote  instances,  the  European  settlements  in  America 
bear  ample  testimony  to  the  truth  of  a  remark  that  has  never  I 
believe  been  doubted.  Plenty  of  rich  land  to  be  had  for  little  or 
nothing  is  so  powerful  a  cause  of  population  as  generally  to 
overcome  all  obstacles.  .  .  . 

The  English  North  American  colonies,  now  the  powerful 
people  of  the  United  States  of  America,  far  outstripped  all  the 
others  in  the  progress  of  their  population.  To  the  quantity  of 
rich  land  which  they  possessed  in  common  with  the  Spanish  and 
Portuguese  colonies,  they  added  a  greater  degree  of  liberty  and 
equality.  Though  not  without  some  restrictions  on  their  foreign 
commerce,  they  were  allowed  the  liberty  of  managing  their  own 
internal  affairs.  The  political  institutions  which  prevailed  were 
favorable  to  the  alienation  and  division  of  property.  Lands  which 
were  not  cultivated  by  the  proprietor  within  a  limited  time  were 
declared  grantable  to  any  other  person.  In  Pennsylvania  there 
was  no  right  of  primogeniture,  and  in  the  provinces  of  New 
England  the  eldest  son  had  only  a  double  share.  There  were  no 
tithes  in  any  of  the  states,  and  scarcely  any  taxes.  And  on 
account  of  the  extreme  cheapness  of  good  land,  and  a  situation 
favorable  to  the  exportation  of  grain,  a  capital  could  not  be  more 
advantageously  employed  than  in  agriculture,  which,  at  the  same 

1  By  T.  R.  Malthus.  Adapted  from  An  Essay  on  the  Principle  of  Population, 
9th  edition,  pp.  252-262.  London,  1888. 


36  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

time  that  it  affords  the  greatest  quantity  of  healthy  work,  supplies 
the  most  valuable  produce  to  the  society. 

The  consequence  of  these  favorable  circumstances  united  was  a 
rapidity  of  increase  almost  without  parallel  in  history.  Through- 
out all  the  northern  provinces  the  population  was  found  to  double 
itself  in  twenty-five  years.  The  original  number  of  persons  which 
had  settled  in  the  four  provinces  of  New  England  in  1643  was 
21,200.  Afterwards  it  was  calculated  that  more  left  them  than 
went  to  them.  In  the  year  1760  they  were  increased  to  half  a 
million.  They  had  therefore  all  along  doubled  their  number  in 
twenty-five  years.  In  New  Jersey  the  period  of  doubling  appeared 
to  be  twenty-two  years,  and  in  Rhode  Island  still  less.  In  the 
back  settlements,  where  the  inhabitants  applied  themselves  solely 
to  agriculture,  and  luxury  was  not  known,  they  were  supposed  to 
double  their  number  in  fifteen  years.  Along  the  seacoast,  which 
would  naturally  be  first  inhabited,  the  period  of  doubling  was 
about  thirty-five  years,  and  in  some  of  the  maritime  towns  the 
population  was  absolutely  at  a  stand.1  From  the  late  census  made 
in  America  it  appears  that,  taking  all  the  states  together,  they 
have  still  continued  to  double  their  numbers  within  twenty-five 
years ;  and  as  the  whole  population  is  now  so  great  as  not  to  be 
materially  affected  by  the  emigrations  from  Europe,  and  as  it  is 
known  that  in  some  of  the  towns  and  districts  near  the  seacoast 
the  progress  of  population  has  been  comparatively  slow,  it  is 
evident  that  in  the  interior  of  the  country  in  general  the  period 
of  doubling  from  procreation  only  must  have  been  considerably 
less  than  twenty-five  years. 

The  population  of  the  United  States  of  America,  according  to 
the  fourth  census  in  1820,  was  7,861,710.  We  have  no  reason 

1  Price,  Observ.  on  Rcvers.  Paym.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  282,  283,  and  Vol.  II,  p.  260. 
I  have  lately  had  an  opportunity  of  seeing  some  extracts  from  the  sermon  of 
Dr.  Styles,  from  which  Dr.  Price  has  taken  these  facts.  Speaking  of  Rhode 
Island,  I  )r.  Styles  says  that  though  the  period  of  doubling  for  the  whole  colony  is 
twenty-five  years,  yet  that  it  is  different  in  different  parts,  and  within  land  is 
twenty  and  fifteen  years.  The  population  of  the  five  towns  of  Gloucester,  Situate, 
Coventry,  West  Greenwich,  and  Exeter  was  5033.  A.n.  1748,  and  6986,  A.I).  1755, 
which  implies  a  period  of  doubling  of  fifteen  years  only.  He  mentions  afterwards 
that  the  county  of  Kent  doubles  in  twenty  years,  and  the  county  of  Providence  in 
eighteen  years. 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  37 

to  believe  that  Great  Britain  is  less  populous  at  present  for  the 
emigration  of  the  small  parent  stock  which  produced  these  num- 
bers. On  the  contrary,  a  certain  degree  of  emigration  is  known 
to  be  favorable  to  the  population  of  the  mother  country.  It  has 
been  particularly  remarked  that  the  two  Spanish  provinces  from 
which  the  greatest  number  of  people  emigrated  to  America 
became  in  consequence  more  populous. 

Whatever  was  the  original  number  of  British  emigrants  which 
increased  so  fast  in  North  America,  let  us  ask,  Why  does  not  an 
equal  number  produce  an  equal  increase  in  the  same  time  in 
Great  Britain  ?  The  obvious  reason  to  be  assigned  is  the  want 
of  food  ;  and  that  this  want  is  the  most  efficient  cause  of  the 
three  immediate  checks  to  population,  which  have  been  observed 
to  prevail  in  all  societies,  is  evident  from  the  rapidity  with  which 
even  old  states  recover  the  desolations  of  war,  pestilence,  famine, 
and  the  convulsions  of  nature.  They  are  then  for  a  short  time 
placed  a  little  in  the  situation  of  new  colonies,  and  the  effect  is 
always  answerable  to  what  might  be  expected.  If  the  industry  of 
the  inhabitants  be  not  destroyed,  subsistence  will  soon  increase 
beyond  the  wants  of  the  reduced  numbers  ;  and  the  invariable 
consequence  will  be  that  population,  which  before  perhaps  was 
nearly  stationary,  will  begin  immediately  to  increase,  and  will 
continue  its  progress  till  the  former  population  is  recovered. 

The  fertile  province  of  Flanders,  which  has  been  so  often  the 
seat  of  the  most  destructive  wars,  after  a  respite  of  a  few  years 
has  always  appeared  as  rich  and  populous  as  ever.  The  undimin- 
ished  population  of  France,  which  has  before  been  noticed,  is  an 
instance  very  strongly  in  point.  .  .  .  The  effects  of  the  dreadful 
plague  in  London  in  1666  were  not  perceptible  fifteen  or  twenty 
years  afterwards.  It  may  even  be  doubted  whether  Turkey  and 
Egypt  are  upon  an  average  much  less  populous  for  the  plagues 
which  periodically  lay  them  waste.  If  the  number  of  people 
which  they  contain  be  considerably  less  now  than  formerly,  it  is 
rather  to  be  attributed  to  the  tyranny  and  oppression  of  the  gov- 
ernments under  which  they  groan,  and  the  consequent  discour- 
agements to  agriculture,  than  to  the  losses  which  they  sustain  by 
the  plague.  The  traces  of  the  most  destructive  famines  in  China, 


38  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Indostan,  Egypt,  and  other  countries,  are  by  all  accounts  very 
soon  obliterated ;  and  the  most  tremendous  convulsions  of  nature, 
such  as  volcanic  eruptions  and  earthquakes,  if  they  do  not  happen 
so  frequently  as  to  drive  away  the  inhabitants  or  destroy  their 
spirit  of  industry,  have  been  found  to  produce  but  a  trifling  effect 
on  the  average  population  of  any  state. 

It  has  appeared  from  the  registers  of  different  countries,  which 
have  already  been  produced,  that  the  progress  of  their  population 
is  checked  by  the  periodical  though  irregular  returns  of  plagues 
and  sickly  seasons.  Dr.  Short,  in  his  curious  researches  into  bills 
of  mortality,  often  uses  the  expression  "  terrible  correctives  of  the 
redundance  of  mankind  "  ; 1  and  in  a  table  of  all  the  plagues, 
pestilences,  and  famines  of  which  he  could  collect  accounts, 
shows  the  constancy  and  universality  of  their  operation. 

The  epidemical  years  in  his  table,  or  the  years  in  which  the 
plague  or  some  great  and  wasting  epidemic  prevailed  (for  smaller 
sickly  seasons  seem  not  to  be  included)  are  43 1,2  of  which  32 
were  before  the  Christian  era.3  If  we  divide  therefore  the  years 
of  the  present  era  by  399,  it  will  appear  that  the  periodical 
returns  of  such  epidemics,  to  some  countries  that  we  are  acquainted 
with,  have  been  on  an  average  only  at  the  interval  of  about  four 
and  one  half  years. 

Of  the  254  great  famines  and  dearths  enumerated  in  the  table, 
15  were  before  the  Christian  era,4  beginning  with  that  which 
occurred  in  Palestine  in  the  time  of  Abraham.  If,  subtract- 
ing these  15,  we  divide  the  years  of  the  present  era  by  the  re- 
mainder, it  will  appear  that  the  average  interval  between  the 
visits  of  this  dreadful  scourge  has  been  only  about  seven  and 
one  half  years. 

How  far  these  "  terrible  correctives  to  the  redundance  of  man- 
kind "  have  been  occasioned  by  the  too  rapid  increase  of  popula- 
tion, is  a  point  which  it  would  be  very  difficult  to  determine 
with  any  degree  of  precision.  The  causes  of  most  of  our  diseases 
appear  to  us  to  be  so  mysterious,  and  probably  are  really  so 
various,  that  it  would  be  rashness  to  lay  too  much  stress  on  any 

.    1  New  Observ.  on  Kills  of  Mortality,  p.  96.  3  Ibid.,  p.  202. 

2  Hist,  of  Air,  Seasons,  etc.,  Vol.  II,  p.  366.  4  Ibid.,  p.  206. 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  39 

single  one ;  but  it  will  not  perhaps  be  too  much  to  say  that 
among  these  causes  we  ought  certainly  to  rank  crowded  houses 
and  insufficient  or  unwholesome  food,  which  are  the  natural 
consequences  of  an  increase  of  population  faster  than  the  accom- 
modations of  a  country  with  respect  to  habitations  and  food 
will  allow. 

Almost  all  the  histories  of  epidemics  which  we  possess  tend  to 
confirm  this  supposition,  by  describing  them  in  general  as  making 
their  principal  ravages  among  the  lower  classes  of  people.  In 
Dr.  Short's  tables  this  circumstance  is  frequently  mentioned ; l 
and  it  further  appears  that  a  very  considerable  proportion  of  the 
epidemic  years  either  followed  or  were  accompanied  by  seasons 
of  dearth  and  bad  food.2  In  other  places  he  also  mentions  great 
plagues  as  diminishing  particularly  the  numbers  of  the  lower  or 
servile  sort  of  people  ; 3  and  in  speaking  of  different  diseases  he 
observes  that  those  which  are  occasioned  by  bad  and  unwhole- 
some food  generally  last  the  longest.4 

We  know  from  constant  experience  that  fevers  are  gener- 
ated in  our  jails,  our  manufactories,  our  crowded  workhouses, 
and  in  the  narrow  and  close  streets  of  our  large  towns  —  all 
which  situations  appear  to  be  similar  in  their  effects  to  squalid 
poverty ;  and  we  cannot  doubt  that  causes  of  this  kind  aggra- 
vated in  degree  contributed  to  the  production  and  prevalence 
of  those  great  and  wasting  plagues  formerly  so  common  in 
Europe,  but  which  now  from  the  mitigation  of  these  causes  are 
everywhere  considerably  abated,  and  in  many  places  appear  to  be 
completely  extirpated. 

Of  the  other  great  scourge  of  mankind,  famine,  it  may  be 
observed  that  it  is  not  in  the  nature  of  things  that  the  increase 
of  population  should  absolutely  produce  one.  This  increase  though 
rapid  is  necessarily  gradual ;  and  as  the  human  frame  cannot  be 
supported  even  for  a  very  short  time  without  food,  it  is  evident 
that  no  more  human  beings  can  grow  up  than  there  is  provision 
to  maintain.  But  though  the  principle  of  population  cannot 
absolutely  produce  a  famine,  it  prepares  the  way  for  one,  and  by 

1  Hist,  of  Air,  Seasons,  etc.,  Vol.  II,  pp.  206  et  seq.         s  New  Observ.,  p.  125. 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  206  et  seq.  and  336.  4  Ibid.,  p.  108. 


40  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

frequently  obliging  the  lower  classes  of  people  to  subsist  nearly 
on  the  smallest  quantity  of  food  that  will  support  life,  turns  even  a 
slight  deficiency  from  the  failure  of  the  seasons  into  a  severe  dearth, 
and  may  be  fairly  said  therefore  to  be  one  of  the  principal  causes 
of  famine.  Among  the  signs  of  an  approaching  dearth,  Dr.  Short 
mentions  one  or  more  years  of  luxuriant  crops  together  ; 1  and  this 
observation  is  probably  just,  as  we  know  that  the  general  effect  of 
years  of  cheapness  and  abundance  is  to  dispose  a  great  number  of 
persons  to  marry,  and  under  such  circumstances  the  return  to  a 
year  merely  of  an  average  crop  might  produce  a  scarcity.  .  .  . 

In  all  these  cases  how  little  soever  force  we  may  be  disposed 
to  attribute  to  the  effects  of  the  principle  of  population  in  the 
actual  production  of  disorders,  we  cannot  avoid  allowing  their 
force  as  predisposing  causes  to  the  reception  of  contagion,  and 
as  giving  very  great  additional  force  to  the  extensiveness  and 
fatality  of  its  ravages.  .  .  . 

The  passion  between  the  sexes  has  appeared  in  every  age  to 
be  so  nearly  the  same  that  it  may  always  be  considered  in 
algebraic  language  as  a  given  quantity.  The  great  law  of  neces- 
sity, which  prevents  population  from  increasing  in  any  country 
beyond  the  food  which  it  can  either  produce  or  acquire,  is  a  law 
so  open  to  our  view,  so  obvious  and  evident  to  our  understandings, 
that  we  cannot  for  a  moment  doubt  it.  The  different  modes  which 
nature  takes  to  repress  a  redundant  population  do  not  indeed  ap- 
pear to  us  so  certain  and  regular ;  but  though  we  cannot  always 
predict  the  mode,  we  may  with  certainty  predict  the  fact.  If  the 
proportion  of  the  births  to  the  deaths  for  a  few  years  indicates  an 
increase  of  numbers  much  beyond  the  proportional  increased  or 
acquired  food  of  the  country,  we  may  be  perfectly  certain  that 
unless  an  emigration  take  place,  the  deaths  will  shortly  exceed  the 
births,  and  that  the  increase  which  had  been  observed  for  a  few 
years  cannot  be  the  real  average  increase  of  the  population  of 
the  country.  If  there  were  no  other  depopulating  causes,  and  if 
the  preventive  check  did  not  operate  very  strongly,  every  country 
would  without  doubt  be  subject  to  periodical  plagues  and  famines. 

1  Hist,  of  Air,  Seasons,  etc.,  Vol.  II,  p.  367. 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  41 

The  only  true  criterion  of  a  real  and  permanent  increase  in 
the  population  of  any  country  is  the  increase  of  the  means  of 
subsistence.  But  even  this  criterion  is  subject  to  some  slight 
variations,,  which  however  are  completely  open  to  our  observation. 
In  some  countries  population  seems  to  have  been  forced ;  that  is, 
the  people  have  been  habituated  by  degrees  to  live  almost  upon 
the  smallest  possible  quantity  of  food.  There  must  have  been 
periods  in  such  countries  when  population  increased  permanently 
without  an  increase  in  the  means  of  subsistence.  China,  India, 
and  the  countries  possessed  by  the  Bedoween  Arabs,  as  we  have 
seen  in  the  former  part  of  this  work,  appear  to  answer  to  this 
description.  The  average  produce  of  these  countries  seems  to 
be  but  barely  sufficient  to  support  the  lives  of  the  inhabitants, 
and  of  course  any  deficiency  from  the  badness  of  the  seasons 
must  be  fatal.  Nations  in  this  state  must  necessarily  be  subject 
to  famines. 

In  America,  where  the  reward  of  labor  is  at  present  so  liberal, 
the  lower  classes  might  retrench  very  considerably  in  a  year  of 
scarcity  without  materially  distressing  themselves.  A  famine 
therefore  seems  to  be  almost  impossible.  It  may  be  expected 
that  in  the  progress  of  the  population  of  America  the  laborers 
will  in  time  be  much  less  liberally  rewarded.  The  numbers  will 
in  this  case  permanently  increase  without  a  proportional  increase 
in  the  means  of  subsistence. 

In  the  different  countries  of  Europe  there  must  be  some  varia- 
tions in  the  proportion  of  the  number  of  inhabitants,  and  the 
quantity  of  food  consumed,  arising  from  the  different  habits  of 
living  which  prevail  in  each  state.  The  laborers  in  the  south  of 
England  are  so  accustomed  to  eat  fine  wheaten  bread,  that  they 
will  suffer  themselves  to  be  half  starved  before  they  will  submit 
to  live  like  the  Scotch  peasants. 

They  might  perhaps  in  time,  by  the  constant  operation  of  the 
hard  law  of  necessity,  be  reduced  to  live  even  like  the  lower 
classes  of  the  Chinese,  and  the  country  would  then  with  the  same 
quantity  of  food  support  a  greater  population.  But  to  effect  this 
must  always  be  a  difficult,  and  every  friend  to  humanity  will  hope 
an  abortive,  attempt. 


42  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

I  have  mentioned  some  cases  where  population  may  per- 
manently increase  without  a  proportional  increase  in  the  means 
of  subsistence.  But  it  is  evident  that  the  variation  in  different 
states  between  the  food  and  the  numbers  supported  by  it  is 
restricted  to  a  limit  beyond  which  it  cannot  pass.  In  every 
country  the  population  of  which  is  not  absolutely  decreasing,  the 
food  must  be  necessarily  sufficient  to  support  and  continue  the 
race  of  laborers. 

Other  circumstances  being  the  same,  it  may  be  affirmed  that 
countries  are  populous  according  to  the  quantity  of  human  food 
which  they  produce  or  can  acquire ;  and  happy  according  to  the 
liberality  with  which  this  food  is  divided,  or  the  quantity  which  a 
day's  labor  will  purchase.  Corn  countries  are  more  populous 
than  pasture  countries,  and  rice  countries  more  populous  than 
corn  countries.  But  their  happiness  does  not  depend  either  upon 
their  being  thinly  or  fully  inhabited,  upon  their  poverty  or  their 
riches,  their  youth  or  their  age,  but  on  the  proportion  which  the 
population  and  the  food  bear  to  each  other. 

This  proportion  is  generally  the  most  favorable  in  new  colonies, 
where  the  knowledge  and  industry  of  an  old  state  operate  on  the 
fertile  unappropriated  land  of  a  new  one.  In  other  cases  the 
youth  or  the  age  of  a  state  is  not  in  this  respect  of  great  impor- 
tance. It  is  probable  that  the  food  of  Great  Britain  is  divided 
in  more  liberal  shares  to  her  inhabitants  at  the  present  period 
than  it  was  two  thousand,  three  thousand,  or  four  thousand  years 
ago.  And  it  has  appeared  that  the  poor  and  thinly  inhabited 
tracts  of  the  Scotch  Highlands  are  more  distressed  by  a  redun- 
dant population  than  the  most  populous  parts  of  Europe. 

If  a  country  were  never  to  be  overrun  by  a  people  more 
advanced  in  arts,  but  left  to  its  own  natural  progress  in  civiliza- 
tion, from  the  time  that  its  produce  might  be  considered  as  a 
unit  to  the  time  that  it  might  be  considered  as  a  million,  during 
the  lapse  of  many  thousand  years,  there  might  not  be  a  single 
period  when  the  mass  of  the  people  could  be  said  to  be  free  from 
distress,  either  directly  or  indirectly,  for  want  of  food.  In  every 
state  in  Europe  since  we  have  first  had  accounts  of  it,  millions 
and  millions  of  human  existences  have  been  repressed  from  this 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  43 

simple  cause,  though  perhaps  in  some  of  these  states  an  absolute 
famine  may  never  have  been  known. 

Must  it  not  then  be  acknowledged  by  an  attentive  examiner  of 
the  histories  of  mankind  that  in  every  age  and  in  every  state  in 
which  man  has  existed  or  does  now  exist, 

The  increase  to  population  is  necessarily  limited  by  the  means 
of  subsistence : 

Population  invariably  increases  when  the  means  of  subsistence 
increase,1  unless  prevented  by  powerful  and  obvious  checks : 

These  checks,  and  the  checks  which  keep  the  population  down 
to  the  level  of  the  means  of  subsistence,  are  moral  restraint,  vice, 
and  misery  ? 

In  comparing  the  state  of  society  which  had  been  considered 
in  this  second  book  with  that  which  formed  the  subject  of  the 
first,2  I  think  it  appears  that  in  modern  Europe  the  positive 
checks  to  population  prevail  less,  and  the  preventive  checks 
more,  than  in  past  times,  and  in  the  more  uncivilized  parts  of 
the  world. 

War,  the  predominant  check  to  the  population  of  savage 
nations,  has  certainly  abated,  even  including  the  late  unhappy 
revolutionary  contests,  and  since  the  prevalence  of  a  greater 
degree  of  personal  cleanliness,  of  better  modes  of  clearing  and 
building  towns,  and  of  a  more  equable  distribution  of  the  products 
of  the  soil  from  improving  knowledge  in  political  economy, 
plagues,  violent  diseases,  and  famines  have  been  certainly  miti- 
gated, and  have  become  less  frequent. 

With  regard  to  the  preventive  check  to  population,  though  it 
must  be  acknowledged  that  that  branch  of  it  which  comes  under 
the  head  of  moral  restraint3  does  not  at  present  prevail  much 
among  the  male  part  of  society ;  yet  I  am  strongly  disposed  to 
believe  that  it  prevails  more  than  in  those  states  which  were  first 

1  By  an  increase  in  the  means  of  subsistence,  as  the  expression  is  used  here,  is 
always  meant  such  an  increase  as  the  mass  of  the  population  can  command  ; 
otherwise  it  can  be  of  no  avail  in  encouraging  an  increase  of  people. 

2  Book  I  of  the  Essay  treats  "  of  the  checks  to  population  in  the  less  civilized 
parts  of  the  world  and  in  past  times,"  and  Book  II  "of  the  checks  to  population 
in  the  different  states  of  modern  Europe."  —  ED. 

3  The  reader  will  recollect  the  confined  sense  in  which  I  use  this  term. 


44  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

considered  ;  and  it  can  scarcely  be  doubted  that  in  modern  Europe 
a  much  larger  proportion  of  women  pass  a  considerable  part  of 
their  lives  in  the  exercise  of  this  virtue  than  in  past  times  and 
among  uncivilized  nations.  But,  however  this  may  be,  if  we 
consider  only  the  general  term  which  implies  principally  a  delay 
of  the  marriage  union  from  prudential  considerations,  without 
reference  to  consequences,  it  may  be  considered  in  this  light  as 
the  most  powerful  of  the  checks  which  in  modern  Europe  keep 
down  the  population  to  the  level  of  the  means  of  subsistence. 


3.     OF    OUR    FUTURE    PROSPECTS     RESPECTING     THE     RE- 
MOVAL OR  MITIGATION  OF  THE  EVILS  ARISING  FROM  THE 
PRINCIPLE  OF  POPULATION1 

OF  MORAL  RESTRAINT,  AND  OUR  OBLIGATION  TO  PRACTICE 
THIS  VIRTUE 

As  it  appears  that  in  the  actual  state  of  every  society  which 
has  come  within  our  review  the  natural  progress  of  population 
has  been  constantly  and  powerfully  checked,  and  as  it  seems 
evident  that  no  improved  form  of  government,  no  plans  of  emi- 
gration, no  benevolent  institutions,  and  no  degree  or  direction  of 
national  industry  can  prevent  the  continued  action  of  a  great 
check  to  population  in  some  form  or  other,  it  follows  that  we 
must  submit  to  it  as  an  inevitable  law  of  nature  ;  and  the  only 
inquiry  that  remains  is  how  it  may  take  place  with  the  least 
possible  prejudice  to  the  virtue  and  happiness  of  human  society. 

All  the  immediate  checks  to  population  which  have  been 
observed  to  prevail  in  the  same  and  different  countries  seem  to 
be  resolvable  into  moral  restraint,  vice,  and  misery  ;  and  if  our 
choice  be  confined  to  these  three,  we  cannot  long  hesitate  in  our 
decision  respecting  which  it  would  be  most  eligible  to  encourage. 

In  the  first  edition  of  this  essay  I  observed  that  as  from  the 
laws  of  nature  it  appeared  that  some  check  to  population  must 
exist,  it  was  better  that  this  check  should  arise  from  a  foresight 

1  By  T.  R.  Malthus.  Adapted  from  An  Kssay  on  the  Principles  of  Population, 
9th  edition,  pp.  389-422,  475-481.  London,  iSSS. 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  45 

of  the  difficulties  attending  a  family  and  the  fear  of  dependent 
poverty  than  from  the  actual  presence  of  want  and  sickness.  This 
idea  will  admit  of  being  pursued  farther ;  and  I  am  inclined  to 
think  that  from  the  prevailing  opinions  respecting  population, 
which  undoubtedly  originated  in  barbarous  ages,  and  have  been 
continued  and  circulated  by  that  part  of  every  community  which 
may  be  supposed  to  be  interested  in  their  support,  we  have  been 
prevented  from  .attending  to  the  clear  dictates  of  reason  and 
nature  on  this  subject. 

Natural  and  moral  evil  seem  to  be  the  instruments  employed 
by  the  Deity  in  admonishing  us  to  avoid  any  mode  of  conduct 
which  is  not  suited  to  our  being,  and  will  consequently  injure  our 
happiness.  If  we  are  intemperate  in  eating  and  drinking,  our 
health  is  disordered  ;  if  we  indulge  the  transports  of  anger,  we 
seldom  fail  to  commit  acts  of  which  we  afterwards  repent ;  if  we 
multiply  too  fast,  we  die  miserably  of  poverty  and  contagious 
diseases.  The  laws  of  nature  in  all  these  cases  are  similar  and 
uniform.  They  indicate  to  us  that  we  have  followed  these 
impulses  too  far,  so  as  to  trench  upon  some  other  law,  which 
equally  demands  attention.  The  uneasiness  we  feel  from  reple- 
tion, the  injuries  that  we  inflict  on  ourselves  or  others  in  anger, 
and  the  inconveniences  we  suffer  on  the  approach  of  poverty,  are 
all  admonitions  to  us  to  regulate  these  impulses  better ;  and  if  we 
heed  not  this  admonition,  we  justly  incur  the  penalty  of  our  dis- 
obedience, and  our  sufferings  operate  as  a  warning  to  others.  .  .  . 

An  implicit  obedience  to  the  impulses  of  our  natural  passions 
would  lead  us  into  the  wildest  and  most  fatal  extravagances,  and 
yet  we  have  the  strongest  reasons  for  believing  that  all  these 
passions  are  so  necessary  to  our  being  that  they  could  not  be 
generally  weakened  or  diminished  without  injuring  our  happiness. 
The  most  powerful  and  universal  of  all  our  desires  is  the  desire 
of  food,  and  of  those  things  —  such  as  clothing,  houses,  etc.  — 
which  are  immediately  necessary  to  relieve  us  from  the  pains  of 
hunger  and  cold.  It  is  acknowledged  by  all  that  these  desires 
put  in  motion  the  greatest  part  of  that  activity  from  which  the 
multiplied  improvements  and  advantages  of  civilized  life  are  de- 
rived, and  that  the  pursuit  of  these  objects  and  the  gratification 


46  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  these  desires  form  the  principal  happiness  of  the  larger  half 
of  mankind,  civilized  or  uncivilized,  and  are  indispensably  neces- 
sary to  the  more  refined  enjoyments  of  the  other  half.  We  are 
all  conscious  of  the  inestimable  benefits  that  we  derive  from  these 
desires  when  directed  in  a  certain  manner,  but  we  are  equally 
conscious  of  the  evils  resulting  from  them  when  not  directed  in 
this  manner  —  so  much  so  that  society  has  taken  upon  itself  to 
punish  most  severely  what  it  considers  as  an  irregular  gratification 
of  them.  And  yet  the  desires  in  both  cases  are  equally  natural, 
and,  abstractedly  considered,  equally  virtuous.  The  act  of  the 
hungry  man  who  satisfies  his  appetite  by  taking  a  loaf  from  the 
shelf  of  another  is  in  no  respect  to  be  distinguished  from  the  act 
of  him  who  does  the  same  thing  with  a  loaf  of  his  own,  but  by 
its  consequences.  From  the  consideration  of  these  consequences 
we  feel  the  most  perfect  conviction  that  if  people  were  not  pre- 
vented from  gratifying  their  natural  desires  with  the  loaves  in 
the  possession  of  others,  the  number  of  loaves  would  universally 
diminish.  This  experience  is  the  foundation  of  the  laws  relating 
to  property,  and  of  the  distinctions  of  virtue  and  vice  in  the 
gratification  of  desires  otherwise  perfectly  the  same. 

If  the  pleasure  arising  from  the  gratification  of  these  propen- 
sities were  universally  diminished  in  vividness,  violations  of 
property  would  become  less  frequent ;  but  this  advantage  would 
be  greatly  overbalanced  by  the  narrowing  of  the  sources  of  enjoy- 
ment. The  diminution  in  the  quantity  of  all  those  productions 
which  contribute  to  human  gratification  would  be  much  greater  in 
proportion  than  the  diminution  of  thefts,  and  the  loss  of  general 
happiness  on  the  one  side  would  be  beyond  comparison  greater 
than  the  gain  of  happiness  on  the  other.  When  we  contemplate 
the  constant  and  severe  toils  of  the  greatest  part  of  mankind,  it 
is  impossible  not  to  be  forcibly  impressed  with  the  reflection  that 
the  sources  of  human  happiness  would  be  most  cruelly  diminished 
if  the  prospect  of  a  good  meal,  a  warm  house,  and  a  comfortable 
fireside  in  the  evening  were  not  incitements  sufficiently  vivid  to  give 
interest  and  cheerfulness  to  the  labors  and  privations  of  the  day. 

After  the  desire  of  food,  the  most  powerful  and  general  of  our 
desires  is  the  passion  between  the  sexes,  taken  in  an  enlarged 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  47 

sense.  Of  the  happiness  spread  over  human  life  by  this  passion 
very  few  are  unconscious.  Virtuous  love,  exalted  by  friendship, 
seems  to  be  that  sort  of  mixture  of  sensual  and  intellectual  enjoy- 
ment particularly  suited  to  the  nature  of  man,  and  most  power- 
fully calculated  to  awaken  the  sympathies  of  the  soul,  and  produce 
the  most  exquisite  gratifications.  Perhaps  there  is  scarcely  a  man 
who  has  once  experienced  the  genuine  delight  of  virtuous  love, 
however  great  his  intellectual  pleasures  may  have  been,  who  does 
not  look  back  to  that  period  as  the  sunny  spot  in  his  whole  life, 
where  his  imagination  loves  most  to  bask,  which  he  recollects  and 
contemplates  with  the  fondest  regret,  and  which  he  would  wish 
to  live  over  again. 

It  has  been  said  by  Mr.  Godwin,  in  order  to  show  the  evident 
inferiority  of  the  pleasures  of  sense,  "  Strip  the  commerce  of  the 
sexes  of  all  its  attendant  circumstances,  and  it  would  be  generally 
despised."  He  might  as  well  say  to  a  man  who  admires  trees, 
Strip  them  of  their  spreading  branches  and  lovely  foliage,  and 
what  beauty  can  you  see  in  a  bare  pole  ?  But  it  was  the  tree 
with  the  branches  and  foliage,  and  not  without  them,  that  excited 
admiration.  .  .  . 

It  is  a  very  great  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  passion  between 
the  sexes  only  operates  and  influences  human  conduct  when  the 
immediate  gratification  of  it  is  in  contemplation.  The  formation 
and  steady  pursuit  of  some  particular  plan  of  life  has  been  justly 
considered  as  one  of  the  most  permanent  sources  of  happiness  ; 
but  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  there  are  not  many  of  these 
plans  formed  which  are  not  connected  in  a  considerable  degree 
with  the  prospect  of  the  gratification  of  this  passion  and  with  the 
support  of  children  arising  from  it.  The  evening  meal,  the  warm 
house,  and  the  comfortable  fireside  would  lose  half  their  interest 
if  we  were  to  exclude  the  idea  of  some  object  of  affection  with 
whom  they  were  to  be  shared. 

We  have  also  great  reason  to  believe  that  the  passion  between 
the  sexes  has  the  most  powerful  tendency  to  soften  and  meliorate 
the  human  character,  and  keep  it  more  alive  to  all  the  kindlier 
emotions  of  benevolence  and  pity.  Observations  on  savage  life 
have  generally  tended  to  prove  that  nations  in  which  this  passion 


48  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

appeared  to  be  less  vivid,  were  distinguished  by  a  ferocious  and 
malignant  spirit,  and  particularly  by  tyranny  and  cruelty  to  the 
sex.  If  indeed  this  bond  of  conjugal  affection  were  considerably 
weakened,  it  seems  probable  either  that  the  man  would  make  use 
of  his  superior  physical  strength,  and  turn  his  wife  into  a  slave, 
as  among  the  generality  of  savages,  or  at  best  that  every  little 
inequality  of  temper,  which  must  necessarily  occur  between  two 
persons,  would  produce  a  total  alienation  of  affection  ;  and  this 
could  hardly  take  place  without  a  diminution  of  parental  fondness 
and  care,  which  would  have  the  most  fatal  effect  on  the  happiness 
of  society.  .  .  . 

Considering  then  the  passion  between  the  sexes  in  all  its  bear- 
ings and  relations,  and  including  the  endearing  engagement  of 
parent  and  child  resulting  from  it,  few  will  be  disposed  to  deny 
that  it  is  one  of  the  principal  ingredients  of  human  happiness. 
Yet  experience  teaches  us  that  much  evil  flows  from  the  irregular 
gratification  of  it ;  and  though  the  evil  be  of  little  weight  in  the 
scale  when  compared  with  the  good,  yet  its  absolute  quantity 
cannot  be  inconsiderable,  on  account  of  the  strength  and  univer- 
sality of  the  passion.  It  is  evident  however  from  the  general 
conduct  of  all  governments  in  their  distribution  of  punishments, 
that  the  evil  resulting  from  this  cause  is  not  so  great  and  so 
immediately  dangerous  to  society,  as  the  irregular  gratification  of 
the  desire  of  property ;  but  placing  this  evil  in  the  most  formi- 
dable point  of  view,  we  should  evidently  purchase  a  diminution  of 
it  at  a  very  high  price  by  the  extinction  or  diminution  of  the 
passion  which  causes  it ;  a  change  which  would  probably  convert 
human  life  either  into  a  cold  and  cheerless  blank  or  a  scene  of 
savage  and  merciless  ferocity. 

A  careful  attention  to  the  remote  as  well  as  immediate  effect 
of  all  the  human  passions  and  all  the  general  laws  of  nature, 
leads  us  strongly  to  the  conclusion  that  under  the  present  consti- 
tution of  things  few  or  none  of  them  will  admit  of  being  greatly 
diminished,  without  narrowing  the  sources  of  good  more  power- 
fully than  the  sources  of  evil.  And  the  reason  seems  to  be 
obvious.  They  are  in  fact  the  materials  of  all  our  pleasures  as 
well  as  of  all  our  pains  ;  of  all  our  happiness  as  well  as  of  all 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  49 

our  misery ;  of  all  our  virtues  as  well  as  of  all  our  vices.  It  must 
therefore  be  regulation  and  direction  that  are  wanted,  not  diminu- 
tion or  extinction.  .  .  . 

The  fecundity  of  the  human  species  is  in  some  respects  a  dis- 
tinct consideration  from  the  passion  between  the  sexes,  as  it 
evidently  depends  more  upon  the  power  of  women  in  bearing 
children  than  upon  the  strength  and  weakness  of  this  passion. 
It  is  a  law  however  exactly  similar  in  its  great  features  to  all 
the  other  laws  of  nature.  It  is  strong  and  general,  and  apparently 
would  not  admit  of  any  very  considerable  diminution  without  being 
inadequate  to  its  object ;  the  evils  arising  from  it  are  incidental 
to  those  necessary  qualities  of  strength  and  generality  ;  and  these 
evils  are  capable  of  being  very  greatly  mitigated  and  rendered 
comparatively  light  by  human  energy  and  virtue.  We  cannot  but 
conceive  that  it  is  an  object  of  the  Creator  that  the  earth  should 
be  replenished  ;  and  it  appears  to  me  clear  that  this  could  not  be 
effected  without  a  tendency  in  population  to  increase  faster  than 
food ;  and  as,  with  the  present  law  of  increase,  the  peopling  of 
the  earth  does  not  proceed  very  rapidly,  we  have  undoubtedly 
some  reason  to  believe  that  this  law  is  not  too  powerful  for  its 
apparent  object.  The  desire  of  the  means  of  subsistence  would 
be  comparatively  confined  in  its  effects,  and  would  fail  of  produc- 
ing that  general  activity  so  necessary  to  the  improvement  of  the 
human  faculties,  were  it  not  for  the  strong  and  universal  effort 
of  population  to  increase  with  greater  rapidity  than  its  supplies. 
If  these  two  tendencies  were  exactly  balanced,  I  do  not  see  what 
motive  there  would  be  sufficiently  strong  to  overcome  the  acknowl- 
edged indolence  of  man,  and  make  him  proceed  in  the  cultivation 
of  the  soil.  The  population  of  any  large  territory,  however  fertile, 
would  be  as  likely  to  stop  at  five  hundred  or  five  thousand,  as  at 
five  millions  or  fifty  millions.  Such  a  balance  therefore  would 
clearly  defeat  one  great  purpose  of  creation  ;  and  if  the  question 
be  merely  a  question  of  degree,  a  question  of  a  little  more  or  a 
little  less  strength,  we  may  fairly  distrust  our  competence  to  judge 
of  the  precise  quantity  necessary  to  answer  the  object  with  the 
smallest  sum  of  incidental  evil.  In  the  present  state  of  things  we 
appear  to  have  under  our  guidance  a  great  power,  capable  of 


50  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

peopling  a  desert  region  in  a  small  number  of  years ;  and  yet 
under  other  circumstances  capable  of  being  confined  by  human 
energy  and  virtue  to  any  limits,  however  narrow,  at  the  expense 
of  a  small  comparative  quantity  of  evil.  The  analogy  of  all  the 
other  laws  of  nature  would  be  completely  violated,  if  in  this 
instance  alone  there  were  no  provision  for  accidental  failures,  no 
resources  against  the  vices  of  mankind,  or  the  partial  mischiefs 
resulting  from  other  general  laws.  To  effect  the  apparent  object 
without  any  attendant  evil,  it  is  evident  that  a  perpetual  change 
in  the  law  of  increase  would  be  necessary,  varying  with  the  vary- 
ing circumstances  of  each  country.  But  instead  of  this  it  is  not 
only  more  consonant  to  the  analogy  of  the  other  parts  of  nature, 
but  we  have  reason  to  think  that  it  is  more  conducive  to  the  for- 
mation and  improvement  of  the  human  mind,  that  the  laws  should 
be  uniform  and  the  evils  incidental  to  it,  under  certain  circum- 
stances, left  to  be  mitigated  or  removed  by  man  himself.  His 
duties  in  this  case  vary  with  his  situation ;  he  is  thus  kept  more 
alive  to  the  consequences  of  his  actions ;  and  his  faculties  have 
evidently  greater  play  and  opportunity  of  improvement,  than  if 
the  evil  were  removed  by  a  perpetual  change  of  the  law  according 
to  circumstances. 

Even  if  from  passions  too  easily  subdued,  or  the  facility  of 
illicit  intercourse,  a  state  of  celibacy  were  a  matter  of  indifference, 
and  not  a  state  of  some  privation,  the  end  of  nature  in  the 
peopling  of  the  earth  would  be  apparently  liable  to  be  defeated. 
It  is  of  the  very  utmost  importance  to  the  happiness  of  mankind 
that  population  should  not  increase  too  fast ;  but  it  does  not 
appear  that  the  object  to  be  accomplished  would  admit  of  any 
considerable  diminution  in  the  desire  of  marriage.  It  is  clearly 
the  duty  of  each  individual  not  to  marry  till  he  has  a  prospect  of 
supporting  his  children  ;  but  it  is  at  the  same  time  to  be  wished 
that  he  should  retain  undiminished  his  desire  of  marriage,  in 
order  that  he  may  exert  himself  to  realize  this  prospect,  and  be 
stimulated  to  make  provision  for  the  support  of  greater  numbers. 

It  is  evidently  therefore  regulation  and  direction  which  are 
required  with  regard  to  the  principle  of  population,  not  diminu- 
tion or  alteration.  And  if  moral  restraint  be  the  only  virtuous  mode 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  51 

of  avoiding  the  incidental  evils  arising  from  this  principle,  our 
obligation  to  practice  it  will  evidently  rest  exactly  upon  the  same 
foundation  as  our  obligation  to  practice  any  of  the  other  virtues. 

Whatever  indulgence  we  may  be  disposed  to  allow  to  occasional 
failures  in  the  discharge  of  a  duty  of  acknowledged  difficulty,  yet 
of  the  strict  line  of  duty  we  cannot  doubt.  Our  obligation  not  to 
marry  till  we  have  a  fair  prospect  of  being  able  to  support  our 
children  will  appear  to  deserve  the  attention  of  the  moralist,  if  it 
can  be  proved  that  an  attention  to  this  obligation  is  of  most 
powerful  effect  in  the  prevention  of  misery ;  and  that  if  it  were 
the  general  custom  to  follow  the  first  impulse  of  nature  and  marry 
at  the  age  of  puberty,  the  universal  prevalence  of  every  known 
virtue  in  the  greatest  conceivable  degree,  would  fail  of  rescuing 
society  from  the  most  wretched  and  desperate  state  of  want,  and 
all  the  diseases  and  famines  which  usually  accompany  it. 

•  OF  THE  EFFECTS  WHICH  WOULD  RESULT  TO  SOCIETY  FROM 
THE  PREVALENCE  OF  MORAL  RESTRAINT 

One  of  the  principal  reasons  which  have  prevented  an  assent 
to  the  doctrine  of  the  constant  tendency  of  population  to  increase 
beyond  the  means  of  subsistence,  is  a  great  unwillingness  to 
believe  that  the  Deity  would  by  the  laws  of  nature  bring  beings 
into  existence,  which  by  the  laws  of  nature  could  not  be  supported 
in  that  existence.  But  if,  in  addition  to  that  general  activity  and 
direction  of  our  industry  put  in  motion  by  these  laws,  we  further 
consider  that  the  incidental  evils  arising  from  them  are  constantly 
directing  our  attention  to  the  proper  check  to  population,  moral 
restraint ;  and  if  it  appear  that  by  a  strict  obedience  to  the  duties 
pointed  out  to  us  by  the  light  of  nature  and  reason,  and  con- 
firmed and  sanctioned  by  revelation,  these  evils  may  be  avoided, 
the  objection  will,  I  trust,  be  removed,  and  all  apparent  imputation 
on  the  goodness  of  the  Deity  be  done  away. 

The  heathen  moralists  never  represented  happiness  as  attain- 
able on  earth  but  through  the  medium  of  virtue  ;  and  among  their 
virtues  prudence  ranked  in  the  first  class,  and  by  some  was  even 
considered  as  including  every  other.  The  Christian  religion  places 


52  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

our  present  as  well  as  future  happiness  in  the  exercise  of  those 
virtues  which  tend  to  fit  us  for  a  state  of  superior  enjoyment ; 
and  the  subjection  of  the  passions  to  the  guidance  of  reason, 
which,  if  not  the  whole,  is  a  principal  branch  of  prudence,  is  in 
consequence  most  particularly  inculcated. 

If,  for  the  sake  of  illustration,  we  might  be  permitted  to  draw  a 
picture  of  society  in  which  each  individual  endeavored  to  attain 
happiness  by  the  strict  fulfillment  of  those  duties  which  the  most 
enlightened  of  the  ancient  philosophers  deduced  from  the  laws  of 
nature,  and  which  have  been  directly  taught  and  received  such 
powerful  sanctions  in  the  moral  code  of  Christianity,  it  would 
present  a  very  different  scene  from  that  which  we  now  contem- 
plate. Every  act  which  was  prompted  by  the  desire  of  immediate 
gratification,  but  which  threatened  an  ultimate  overbalance  of 
pain,  would  be  considered  as  a  breach  of  duty,  and  consequently 
no  man  whose  earnings  were  only  sufficient  to  maintain  two 
children  would  put  himself  in  a  situation  in  which  he  might  have 
to  maintain  four  or  five,  however  he  might  be  prompted  to  it  by 
the  passion  of  love.  This  prudential  restraint,  if  it  were  generally 
adopted,  by  narrowing  the  supply  of  labor  in  the  market,  would 
in  the  natural  course  of  things  soon  raise  its  price.  The  period 
of  delayed  gratification  would  be  passed  in  saving  the  earnings 
which  were  above  the  wants  of  a  single  man,  and  in  acquiring 
habits  of  sobriety,  industry,  and  economy,  which  would  enable  him 
in  a  few  years  to  enter  into  the  matrimonial  contract  without  fear 
of  its  consequences.  The  operation  of  the  preventive  check  in 
this  way,  by  constantly  keeping  the  population  within  the  limits 
of  the  food  though  constantly  following  its  increase,  would  give  a 
real  value  to  the  rise  of  wages  and  the  sums  saved  by  laborers 
before  marriage,  very  different  from  those  forced  advances  in  the 
price  of  labor  or  arbitrary  parochial  donations  which,  in  propor- 
tion to  their  magnitude  and  extensiveness,  must  of  necessity  be 
followed  by  a  proportional  advance  in  the  price  of  provisions.  As 
the  wages  of  labor  would  thus  be  sufficient  to  maintain  with 
decency  a  large  family,  and  as  every  married  couple  would  set 
out  with  a  sum  for  contingencies,  all  abject  poverty  would  be 
removed  from  society,  or  would  at  least  be  confined  to  a  very  few 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  53 

who  had  fallen  into  misfortunes  against  which  no  prudence  or 
foresight  could  provide. 

The  interval  between  the  age  of  puberty  and  the  period  at 
which  each  individual  might  venture  on  marriage  must,  according 
to  the  supposition,  be  passed  in  strict  chastity,  because  the  law  of 
chastity  cannot  be  violated  without  producing  evil.  The  effect  of 
anything  like  a  promiscuous  intercourse,  which  prevents  the  birth 
of  children,  is  evidently  to  weaken  the  best  affections  of  the  heart, 
and  in  a  very  marked  manner  to  degrade  the  female  character ; 
and  any  other  intercourse  would,  without  improper  arts,  bring  as 
many  children  into  the  society  as  marriage,  with  a  much  greater 
probability  of  their  becoming  a  burden  to  it. 

These  considerations  show  that  the  virtue  of  chastity  is  not,  as 
some  have  supposed,  a  forced  produce  of  artificial  society,  but 
that  it  has  the  most  real  and  solid  foundation  in  nature  and 
reason,  being  apparently  the  only  virtuous  means  of  avoiding  the 
vice  and  misery  which  result  so  often  from  the  principle  of 
population. 

In  such  a  society  as  we  have  been  supposing  it  might  be  neces- 
sary for  some  of  both  sexes  to  pass  many  of  the  early  years  of 
life  in  the  single  state,  and  if  this  were  general  there  would 
certainly  be  room  for  a  much  greater  number  to  marry  afterwards, 
so  that  fewer,  upon  the  whole,  would  be  condemned  to  pass  their 
lives  in  celibacy.  If  the  custom  of  not  marrying  early  prevailed 
generally,  and  if  violations  of  chastity  were  equally  dishonorable 
in  both  sexes,  a  more  familiar  and  friendly  intercourse  between 
them  might  take  place  without  danger.  Two  young  people  might 
converse  together  intimately  without  its  being  immediately  sup- 
posed that  they  either  intended  marriage  or  intrigue,  and  a  much 
better  opportunity  would  thus  be  given  to  both  sexes  of  finding 
out  kindred  dispositions,  and  of  forming  those  strong  and  lasting 
attachments  without  which  the  married  state  is  generally  more 
productive  of  misery  than  of  happiness.  The  earlier  years  of  life 
would  not  be  spent  without  love,  though  without  the  full  gratifi- 
cation of  it.  The  passion,  instead  of  being  extinguished  as  it 
now  too  frequently  is  by  early  sensuality,  would  only  be  repressed 
for  a  time  that  it  might  afterwards  burn  with  a  brighter,  purer, 


54  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

and  steadier  flame,  and  the  happiness  of  the  married  state,  instead 
of  only  affording  the  means  of  immediate  indulgence,  would  be 
looked  forward  to  as  the  prize  of  industry  and  virtue,  and  the 
reward  of  a  genuine  and  constant  attachment.1 

The  passion  of  love  is  a  powerful  stimulus  in  the  formation  of 
character  and  often  prompts  to  the  most  noble  and  generous 
exertions,  but  this  is  only  when  the  affections  are  centered  in  one 
object,  and  generally  when  full  gratification  is  delayed  by  difficul- 
ties.2 The  heart  is  perhaps  never  so  much  disposed  to  virtuous 
conduct,  and  certainly  at  no  time  is  the  virtue  of  chastity  so  little 
difficult  to  men  as  when  under  the  influence  of  such  a  passion. 
Late  marriages  taking  place  in  this  way  would  be  very  different 
from  those  of  the  same  name  at  present,  where  the  union  is  too 
frequently  prompted  solely  by  interested  views,  and  the  parties 
meet  not  infrequently  with  exhausted  constitutions  and  generally 
with  exhausted  affections.  The  late  marriages  at  present  are 
indeed  principally  confined  to  the  men,  of  whom  there  are  few, 
however  advanced  in  life,  who  if  they  determine  to  marry  do  not 
fix  their  choice  on  a  young  wife.  A  young  woman  without  for- 
tune, when  she  has  passed  her  twenty-fifth  year,  begins  to  fear, 
and  with  reason,  that  she  may  lead  a  life  of  celibacy,  and  with  a 
heart  capable  of  forming  a  strong  attachment  feels  as  each  year 
creeps  on  her  hopes  of  finding  an  object  on  which  to  rest  her 

1  Dr.  Currie,  in  his  interesting  observations  on  the  character  and  condition  of 
the  Scotch  peasantry,  prefixed  to  his  Life  of  Burns,  remarks  with  a  just  knowledge 
of  human  nature  that  "  in  appreciating  the  happiness  and  virtue  of  a  community 
there  is  perhaps  no  single  criterion  on  which  so  much  dependence  may  be  placed 
as  the  state  of  the  intercourse  between  the  sexes.    Where  this  displays  ardor  of 
attachment  accompanied  by  purity  of  conduct,  the  character  and  the  influence  of 
women  rise,  our  imperfect  nature  mounts  in  the  scale  of  moral  excellence,  and 
from  the  source   of  this   single   affection  a  stream   of  felicity  descends  which 
branches  into  a  thousand  rivulets  that  enrich  and  adorn  the  field  of  life.    Where 
the  attachment  between  the  sexes  sinks  into  an  appetite,  the  heritage  of  our 
species  is  comparatively  poor,  and  man  approaches  to  the  condition  of  the  brutes 
that  perish"  (Vol.  I,  p.  18). 

2  Dr.  Currie  observes  that  "  the  Scottish  peasant  in  the  course  of  his  passion 
often   exerts   a   spirit   of  adventure   of  which  a   Spanish   cavalier  need   not  be 
ashamed."    It  is  not  to  be  doubted  that  this  kind  of  romantic  passion  which  Dr. 
Currie  says  characterizes  the  attachment  of  the   humblest  people  of  Scotland, 
and  which  has  been  greatly  fostered  by  the  elevation  of  mind  given  to  them  by 
a  superior  education,  has  had  a  most  beneficial  influence  on  the  national  character. 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  55 

affections  gradually  diminishing,  and  the  uneasiness  of  her  situa- 
tion aggravated  by  the  silly  and  unjust  prejudices  of  the  world. 
If  the  general  age  of  marriage  among  women  were  later  the 
period  of  youth  and  hope  would  be  prolonged,  and  fewer  would 
be  ultimately  disappointed. 

That  a  change  of  this  kind  would  be  a  most  decided  advantage 
to  the  more  virtuous  half  of  society  we  cannot  for  a  moment 
doubt.  However  impatiently  the  privation  might  be  borne  by  the 
men,  it  would  be  supported  by  the  women  readily  and  cheerfully, 
and  if  they  could  look  forward  with  just  confidence  to  marriage 
at  twenty-seven  or  twenty-eight,  I  fully  believe  that  if  the  matter 
were  left  to  their  free  choice,  they  would  clearly  prefer  waiting 
till  this  period  to  the  being  involved  in  all  the  cares  of  a  large 
family  at  twenty-five.  The  most  eligible  age  of  marriage  how- 
ever could  not  be  fixed,  but  must  depend  entirely  on  circum- 
stances and  situation.  There  is  no  period  of  human  life  at  which 
nature  more  strongly  prompts  to  a  union  of  the  sexes  than  from 
seventeen  or  eighteen  to  twenty.  In  every  society  above  that  state 
of  depression  which  almost  excludes  reason  and  foresight,  these 
early  tendencies  must  necessarily  be  restrained  ;  and  if  in  the 
actual  state  of  things  such  a  restraint  on  the  impulses  of  nature 
be  found  unavoidable,  at  what  time  can  we  be  consistently  released 
from  it  but  at  that  period,  whatever  it  may  be,  when  in  the 
existing  circumstances  of  the  society  a  fair  prospect  presents 
itself  of  maintaining  a  family  ? 

The  difficulty  of  moral  restraint  will  perhaps  be  objected  to  this 
doctrine.  To  him  who  does  not  acknowledge  the  authority  of 
the  Christian  religion  I  have  only  to  say  that  after  the  most 
careful  investigation  this  virtue  appears  to  be  absolutely  necessary 
in  order  to  avoid  certain  evils  which  would  otherwise  result  from 
the  general  laws  of  nature.  According  to  his  own  principles  it  is 
his  duty  to  pursue  the  greatest  good  consistent  with  these  laws, 
and  not  to  fail  in  this  important  end,  and  produce  an  overbalance 
of  misery  by  a  partial  obedience  to  some  of  the  dictates  of  nature 
while  he  neglects  others.  The  path  of  virtue,  though  it  be  the 
only  path  which  leads  to  permanent  happiness,  has  always  been 
represented  by  the  heathen  moralists  as  of  difficult  ascent. 


56  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

To  the  Christian  I  would  say  that  the  Scriptures  most  clearly 
and  precisely  point  it  out  to  us  as  our  duty  to  restrain  our  passions 
within  the  bounds  of  reason,  and  it  is  a  palpable  disobedience  of 
this  law  to  indulge  our  desires  in  such  a  manner  as  reason  tells 
us  will  unavoidably  end  in  misery.  The  Christian  cannot  consider 
the  difficulty  of  moral  restraint  as  any  argument  against  its  being 
his  duty,  since  in  almost  every  page  of  the  sacred  writings  man 
is  described  as  encompassed  on  all  sides  by  temptations  which  it 
is  extremely  difficult  to  resist ;  and  though  no  duties  are  enjoined 
which  do  not  contribute  to  his  happiness  on  earth  as  well  as  in  a 
future  state,  yet  an  undeviating  obedience  is  never  represented  as 
an  easy  task. 

There  is  in  general  so  strong  a  tendency  to  love  in  early  youth 
that  it  is  extremely  difficult  at  this  period  to  distinguish  a  genuine 
from  a  transient  passion.  If  the  earlier  years  of  life  were  passed 
by  both  sexes  in  moral  restraint,  from  the  greater  facility  that  this 
would  give  to  the  meeting  of  kindred  dispositions,  it  might  even 
admit  of  a  doubt  whether  more  happy  marriages  would  not  take 
place,  and  consequently  more  pleasure  from  the  passion  of  love, 
than  in  a  state  such  as  that  of  America,  the  circumstances  of 
which  allow  of  a  very  early  union  of  the  sexes.  But  if  we  com- 
pare the  intercourse  of  the  sexes  in  such  a  society  as  I  have  been 
supposing  with  that  which  now  exists  in  Europe,  taken  under  all 
its  circumstances,  it  may  safely  be  asserted  that,  independently  of 
the  load  of  misery  which  would  be  removed,  the  sum  of  pleasur- 
able sensations  from  the  passion  of  love  would  be  increased  in  a 
very  great  degree. 

If  we  could  suppose  such  a  system  general,  the  accession  of 
happiness  to  society  in  its  internal  economy  would  scarcely  be 
greater  than  in  its  external  relations.  It  might  fairly  be  expected 
that  war,  that  great  pest  of  the  human  race,  would  under  such 
circumstances  soon  cease  to  extend  its  ravages  so  widely  and  so 
frequently  as  it  does  at  present. 

One  of  its  first  causes  and  most  powerful  impulses  was  un- 
doubtedly an  insufficiency  of  room  and  food  ;  and  greatly  as  the 
circumstances  of  mankind  have  changed  since  it  first  began,  the 
same  cause  still  continues  to  operate  and  to  produce,  though  in 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  57 

a  smaller  degree,  the  same  effects.  The  ambition  of  princes 
would  want  instruments  of  destruction  if  the  distresses  of  the 
lower  classes  of  people  did  not  drive  them  under  their  standards. 
A  recruiting  sergeant  always  prays  for  a  bad  harvest  and  a  want 
of  employment,  or  in  other  words  a  redundant  population. 

In  the  earlier  ages  of  the  world  when  war  was  the  great 
business  of  mankind,  and  the  drains  of  population  from  this 
cause  were  beyond  comparison  greater  than  in  modern  times,  the 
legislators  and  statesmen  of  each  country,  adverting  principally  to 
the  means  of  offense  and  defense,  encouraged  an  increase  of 
people  in  every  possible  way,  fixed  a  stigma  on  barrenness  and 
celibacy,  and  honored  marriage.  The  popular  religions  followed 
these  prevailing  opinions.  In  many  countries  the  prolific  power 
of  nature  was  the  object  of  solemn  worship.  In  the  religion  of 
Mahomet,  which  was  established  by  the  sword,  and  the  promul- 
gation of  which  in  consequence  could  not  be  unaccompanied  by 
an  extraordinary  destruction  of  its  followers,  the  procreation  of 
children  to  glorify  the  Creator  was  laid  down  as  one  of  the  prin- 
cipal duties  of  man,  and  he  who  had  the  most  numerous  offspring 
was  considered  as  having  best  answered  the  end  of  his  creation. 
The  prevalence  of  such  moral  sentiments  had  naturally  a  great 
effect  in  encouraging  marriage,  and  the  rapid  procreation  which 
followed  was  partly  the  effect  and  partly  the  cause  of  incessant 
war.  The  vacancies  occasioned  by  former  desolations  made  room 
for  the  rearing  of  fresh  supplies,  and  the  overflowing  rapidity  with 
which  these  supplies  followed  constantly  furnished  fresh  incite- 
ments and  fresh  instruments  for  renewed  hostilities.  Under  the 
influence  of  such  moral  sentiments,  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  how 
the  fury  of  incessant  war  should  ever  abate. 

It  is  a  pleasing  confirmation  of  the  truth  and  divinity  of  the 
Christian  religion,  and  of  its  being  adapted  to  a  more  improved 
state  of  human  society,  that  it  places  our  duties  respecting  mar- 
riage and  the  procreation  of  children  in  a  different  light  from 
that  in  which  they  were  before  beheld. 

Without  entering  minutely  into  the  subject,  which  would  evi- 
dently lead  too  far,  I  think  it  will  be  admitted  that  if  we  apply 
the  spirit  of  St.  Paul's  declarations  respecting  marriage  to  the 


58  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

present  state  of  society  and  the  known  constitution  of  our  nature, 
the  natural  inference  seems  to  be  that,  when  marriage  does  not 
interfere  with  higher  duties,  it  is  right ;  when  it  does,  it  is  wrong. 
According  to  the  general  principles  of  moral  science,  "  the 
method  of  coming  at  the  will  of  God  from  the  light  of  nature  is 
to  inquire  into  the  tendency  of  the  action  to  promote  or  diminish 
the  general  happiness." l  There  are  perhaps  few  actions  that 
tend  so  directly  to  diminish  the  general  happiness  as  to  marry 
without  the  means  of  supporting  children.  He  who  commits  this 
act  therefore  clearly  offends  against  the  will  of  God  ;  and  having 
become  a  burden  on  the  society  in  which  he  lives,  and  plunged 
himself  and  family  into  a  situation  in  which  virtuous  habits  are 
preserved  with  more  difficulty  than  in  any  other,  he  appears  to 
have  violated  his  duty  to  his  neighbors  and  to  himself,  and  thus 
to  have  listened  to  the  voice  of  passion  in  opposition  to  his  higher 
obligations. 

In  a  society  such  as  I  have  supposed,  all  the  members  of 
which  endeavor  to  obtain  happiness  by  obedience  to  the  moral 
code  derived  from  the  light  of  nature,  and  enforced  by  strong 
sanctions  in  revealed  religion,  it  is  evident  that  no  such  marriages 
could  take  place  ;  and  the  prevention  of  a  redundant  population 
in  this  way  would  remove  one  of  the  principal  encouragements  to 
offensive  war,  and  at  the  same  time  tend  powerfully  to  eradicate 
those  two  fatal  political  disorders,  internal  tyranny  and  internal 
tumult,  which  mutually  produce  each  other. 

Indisposed  to  a  war  of  offense,  in  a  war  of  defense  such  a 
society  would  be  strong  as  a  rock  of  adamant.  Where  every 
family  possessed  the  necessaries  of  life  in  plenty,  and  a  decent 
portion  of  its  comforts  and  conveniences,  there  could  not  exist 
that  hope  of  change,  or  at  best  that  melancholy  and  disheartening 
indifference  to  it,  which  sometimes  prompts  the  lower  classes  of 
people  to  say,  "  Let  what  will  come,  we  cannot  be  worse  off  than 
we  are  now."  Every  heart  and  hand  will  be  united  to  repel  an 
invader  when  each  individual  felt  the  value  of  the  solid  advan- 
tages which  he  enjoyed,  and  a  prospect  of  change  presented  only 
a  prospect  of  being  deprived  of  them. 

1  Paley,  Moral  Philosophy,  Vol.  I,  ]>k.  II,  chap,  iv,  p.  65. 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  59 

As  it  appears  therefore  that  it  is  in  the  power  of  each  individ- 
ual to  avoid  all  the  evil  consequences  to  himself  and  society 
resulting  from  the  principle  of  population  by  the  practice  of  a 
virtue  clearly  dictated  to  him  by  the  light  of  nature  and  expressly 
enjoined  in  revealed  religion,  and  as  we  have  reason  to  think 
that  the  exercise  of  this  virtue  to  a  certain  degree  would  tend 
rather  to  increase  than  diminish  individual  happiness,  we  can 
have  no  reason  to  impeach  the  justice  of  the  Deity  because  his 
general  laws  make  this  virtue  necessary,  and  punish  our  offenses 
against  it  by  the  evils  attendant  upon  vice  and  the  pains  that 
accompany  the  various  forms  of  premature  death.  A  really  virtu- 
ous society  such  as  I  have  supposed  would  avoid  these  evils.  It 
is  the  apparent  object  of  the  Creator  to  deter  us  from  vice  by  the 
pains  which  accompany  it,  and  to  lead  us  to  virtue  by  the  happi- 
ness that  it  produces.  This  object  appears  to  our  conceptions  to 
be  worthy  of  a  benevolent  Creator.  The  laws  of  nature  respecting 
population  tend  to  promote  this  object.  No  imputation  therefore 
on  the  benevolence  of  the  Deity  can  be  founded  on  these  laws 
which  is  not  equally  applicable  to  any  of  the  evils  necessarily 
incidental  to  an  imperfect  state  of  existence. 

OF  THE  ONLY  EFFECTUAL  MODE  OF  IMPROVING  THE 
CONDITION  OF  THE  POOR 

He  who  publishes  a  moral  code  or  system  of  duties,  however 
firmly  he  may  be  convinced  of  the  strong  obligation  on  each 
individual  strictly  to  conform  to  it,  has  never  the  folly  to  imagine 
that  it  will  be  universally  or  even  generally  practiced.  But  this 
is  no  valid  objection  against  the  publication  of  the  code.  If  it 
were,  the  same  objection  would  always  have  applied,  we  should 
be  totally  without  general  rules,  and  to  the  vices  of  mankind 
arising  from  temptation  would  be  added  a  much  longer  list  than 
we  have  at  present  of  vices  from  ignorance. 

Judging  merely  from  the  light  of  nature,  if  we  feel  convinced 
of  the  misery  arising  from  a  redundant  population  on  the  one 
hand,  and  of  the  evils  and  unhappiness,  particularly  to  the  female 
sex,  arising  from  promiscuous  intercourse,  on  the  other,  I  do  not 


60  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

see  how  it  is  possible  for  any  person  who  acknowledges  the  prin- 
ciple of  utility  as  the  great  criterion  of  moral  rules,  to  escape  the 
conclusion  that  moral  restraint,  or  the  abstaining  from  marriage 
till  we  are  in  a  condition  to  support  a  family,  with  a  perfectly 
moral  conduct  during  that  period,  is  the  strict  line  of  duty ;  and 
when  revelation  is  taken  into  the  question,  this  duty  undoubtedly 
receives  very  powerful  confirmation.  At  the  same  time  I  believe 
that  few  of  my  readers  can  be  less  sanguine  than  I  am  in  their 
expectations  of  any  sudden  and  great  change  in  the  general 
conduct  of  men  on  this  subject ;  and  the  chief  reason  why  in  the 
last  chapter  I  allowed  myself  to  suppose  the  universal  prevalence 
of  this  virtue  was  that  I  might  endeavor  to  remove  any  imputation 
on  the  goodness  of  the  Deity,  by  showing  that  the  evils  arising 
from  the  principle  of  population  were  exactly  of  the  same  nature 
as  the  generality  of  other  evils  which  excite  fewer  complaints, 
that  they  were  increased  by  human  ignorance  and  indolence,  and 
diminished  by  human  knowledge  and  virtue  ;  and  on  the  supposi- 
tion that  each  individual  strictly  fulfilled  his  duty  would  be  almost 
totally  removed,  and  this  without  any  general  diminution  of  those 
sources  of  pleasure  arising  from  the  regulated  indulgence  of  the 
passions,  which  have  been  justly  considered  as  the  principal 
ingredients  of  human  happiness. 

If  it  will  answer  any  purpose  of  illustration,  I  see  no  harm  in 
drawing  the  picture  of  a  society,  in  which  each  individual  is  sup- 
posed strictly  to  fulfill  his  duties  ;  nor  does  a  writer  appear  to  be 
justly  liable  to  the  imputation  of  being  visionary,  unless  he  make 
such  universal  or  general  obedience  necessary  to  the  practical 
utility  of  his  system,  and  to  that  degree  of  moderate  and  partial 
improvement  which  is  all  that  can  rationally  be  expected  from 
the  most  complete  knowledge  of  our  duties. 

But  in  this  respect  there  is  an  essential  difference  between  that 
improved  state  of  society  which  I  have  supposed  in  the  last 
chapter  and  most  of  the  other  speculations  on  this  subject.  The 
improvement  there  supposed,  if  we  ever  should  make  approaches 
towards  it,  is  to  be  effected  in  the  way  in  which  we  have  been  in 
the  habit  of  seeing  all  the  greatest  improvements  effected,  by  a 
direct  application  to  the  interest  and  happiness  of  each  individual. 


THE  MALTHUSIAN' THEORY  6 1 

It  is  not  required  of  us  to  act  from  motives  to  which  we  are 
unaccustomed  ;  to  pursue  a  general  good  which  we  may  not  dis- 
tinctly comprehend,  or  the  effect  of  which  may  be  weakened  by 
distance  and  diffusion.  The  happiness  of  the  whole  is  to  be  the 
result  of  the  happiness  of  individuals,  and  to  begin  first  with 
them.  No  cooperation  is  required.  Every  step  tells.  He  who 
performs  his  duty  faithfully  will  reap  the  full  fruits  of  it,  what- 
ever may  be  the  number  of  others  who  fail.  This  duty  is  intelli- 
gible to  the  humblest  capacity.  It  is  merely  that  he  is  not  to 
bring  beings  into  the  world  for  whom  he  cannot  find  the  means 
of  support.  When  once  this  subject  is  cleared  from  the  obscurity 
thrown  over  it  by  parochial  laws  and  private  benevolence,  every 
man  must  feel  the  strongest  conviction  of  such  an  obligation.  If 
he  cannot  support  his  children,  they  must  starve  ;  and  if  he  marry 
in  the  face  of  a  fair  probability  that  he  shall  not  be  able  to 
support  his  children,  he  is  guilty  of  all  the  evils  which  he  thus 
brings  upon  himself,  his  wife,  and  his  offspring.  It  is  clearly  his 
interest,  and  will  tend  greatly  to  promote  his  happiness,  to  defer 
marrying,  till  by  industry  and  economy  he  is  in  a  capacity  to 
support  the  children  that  he  may  reasonably  expect  from  his 
marriage  ;  and  as  he  cannot  in  the  meantime  gratify  his  passions 
without  violating  an  express  command  of  God,  and  running  a  great 
risk  of  injuring  himself  or  some  of  his  fellow  creatures,  consider- 
ations of  his  own  interest  and  happiness  will  dictate  to  him  the 
strong  obligation  to  a  moral  conduct  while  he  remains  unmarried. 
However  powerful  may  be  the  impulses  of  passion,  they  are 
generally  in  some  degree  modified  by  reason.  And  it  does  not 
seem  entirely  visionary  to  suppose  that,  if  the  true  and  permanent 
cause  of  poverty  were  clearly  explained  and  forcibly  brought  home 
to  each  man's  bosom,  it  would  have  some  and  perhaps  not  an 
inconsiderable  influence  on  his  conduct ;  at  least  the  experiment 
has  never  yet  been  fairly  tried.  Almost  everything  that  has  been 
hitherto  done  for  the  poor  has  tended,  as  if  with  solicitous  care, 
to  throw  a  veil  of  obscurity  over  this  subject  and  to  hide  from 
them  the  true  cause  of  their  poverty.  When  the  wages  of  labor 
are  hardly  sufficient  to  maintain  t\vo  children,  a  man  marries  and 
has  five  or  six  ;  he  of  course  finds  himself  miserably  distressed. 


62  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

He  accuses  the  insufficiency  of  the  price  of  labor  to  maintain  a 
family.  He  accuses  his  parish  for  their  tardy  and  sparing  fulfill- 
ment of  their  obligation  to  assist  him.  He  accuses  the  avarice  of 
the  rich  who  suffer  him  to  want  what  they  can  so  well  spare. 
He  accuses  the  partial  and  unjust  institutions  of  society  which  have 
awarded  him  an  inadequate  share  of  the  produce  of  the  earth. 
He  accuses  perhaps  the  dispensations  of  Providence  which  have 
assigned  to  him  a  place  in  society  so  beset  with  unavoidable 
distress  and  dependence.  In  searching  for  objects  of  accusation, 
he  never  adverts  to  the  quarter  from  which  his  misfortunes 
originate.  The  last  person  that  he  would  think  of  accusing  is 
himself,  on  whom  in  fact  the  principal  blame  lies  except  so  far 
as  he  has  been  deceived  by  the  higher  classes  of  society.  He 
may  perhaps  wish  that  he  had  not  married,  because  he  now  feels 
the  inconveniences  of  it ;  but  it  never  enters  into  his  head  that 
he  can  have  done  anything  wrong.  He  has  always  been  told  that 
to  raise  up  subjects  for  his  king  and  country  is  a  very  meritorious 
act.  He  has  done  this  and  yet  is  suffering  for  it ;  and  it  cannot 
but  strike  him  as  most  extremely  unjust  and  cruel  in  his  king  and 
country  to  allow  him  thus  to  suffer  in  return  for  giving  them  what 
they  are  continually  declaring  that  they  particularly  want. 

Till  these  erroneous  ideas  have  been  corrected,  and  the  lan- 
guage of  nature  and  reason  has  been  generally  heard  on  the 
subject  of  population,  instead  of  the  language  of  error  and  preju- 
dice, it  cannot  be  said  that  any  fair  experiment  has  been  made 
with  the  understandings  of  the  common  people  ;  and  we  cannot 
justly  accuse  them  of  improvidence  and  want  of  industry,  till  they 
act  as  they  do  now,  after  it  has  been  brought  home  to  their  com- 
prehension that  they  are  themselves  the  cause  of  their  own 
poverty ;  that  the  means  of  redress  are  in  their  own  hands,  and 
in  the  hands  of  no  other  persons  whatever ;  that  the  society  in 
which  they  live,  and  the  government  which  presides  over  it,  arc 
without  any  direct  power  in  this  respect ;  and  that  however 
ardently  they  may  desire  to  relieve  them,  and  whatever  attempts 
they  may  make  to  do  so,  they  are  really  and  truly  unable  to 
execute  what  they  benevolently  wish,  but  unjustly  promise  ;  that 
when  the  wages  of  labor  will  not  maintain  a  family  it  is  an 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  63 

incontrovertible  sign  that  their-  king  and  country  do  not  want 
more  subjects,  or  at  least  that  they  cannot  support  them  ;  that,  if 
they  marry  in  this  case,  so  far  from  fulfilling  a  duty  to  society, 
they  are  throwing  a  useless  burden  on  it,  at  the  same  time 
that  they  are  plunging  themselves  into  distress,  and  that  they 
are  acting  directly  contrary  to  the  will  of  God,  and  bringing  down 
upon  themselves  various  diseases,  which  might  all,  or  the  greater 
part,  have  been  avoided  if  they  had  attended  to  the  repeated 
admonitions  which  he  gives  by  the  general  laws  of  nature  to  every 
being  capable  of  reason. 

Paley,  in  his  Moral  Philosophy,  observes  that  "  in  countries  in 
which  subsistence  is  become  scarce,  it  behoves  the  state  to  watch 
over  the  public  morals  with  increased  solicitude  ;  for  nothing  but 
the  instinct  of  nature,  under  the  restraint  of  chastity,  will  induce 
men  to  undertake  the  labor,  or  consent  to  the  sacrifice  of  per- 
sonal liberty  and  indulgence,  which  the  support  of  a  family  in 
such  circumstances  requires."  1  That  it  is  always  the  duty  of  a 
state  to  use  every  exertion  likely  to  be  effectual  in  discouraging 
vice  and  promoting  virtue,  and  that  no  temporary  circumstances 
ought  to  cause  any  relaxation  in  these  exertions,  is  certainly  true. 
The  means  therefore  proposed  are  always  good ;  but  the  particular 
end  in  view  in  this  case  appears  to  be  absolutely  criminal.  We 
wish  to  force  people  into  marriage,  when  from  the  acknowledged 
scarcity  of  subsistence  they  will  have  little  chance  of  being  able 
to  support  their  children.  We  might  as  well  force  people  into 
the  water  who  are  unable  to  swim.  In  both  cases  we  rashly 
tempt  Providence.  Nor  have  we  more  reason  to  believe  that  a 
miracle  will  be  worked  to  save  us  from  the  misery  and  mortality 
resulting  from  our  conduct  in  the  one  case  than  in  the  other. 

The  object  of  those  who  really  wish  to  better  the  condition  of 
the  lower  classes  of  society  must  be  to  raise  the  relative  propor- 
tion between  the  price  of  labor  and  the  price  of  provisions,  so  as 
to  enable  the  laborer  to  command  a  larger  share  of  the  neces- 
saries and  comforts  of  life.  We  have  hitherto  principally  attempted 
to  attain  this  end  by  encouraging  the  married  poor,  and  conse- 
quently increasing  the  number  of  laborers,  and  overstocking  the 

1  Vol.  II,  chap,  xi,  p.  352. 


64  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

market  with  a  commodity  which  we  still  say  that  we  wish  to  be 
dear.  It  would  seem  to  have  required  no  great  spirit  of  divina- 
tion to  foretell  the  certain  failure  of  such  a  plan  of  proceeding. 
There  is  nothing  however  like  experience.  It  has  been  tried  in 
many  different  countries  and  for  many  hundred  years,  and  the 
success  has  always  been  answerable  to  the  nature  of  the  scheme. 
It  is  really  time  now  to  try  something  else.  .  .  . 

In  an  endeavor  to  raise  the  proportion  of  the  quantity  of  pro- 
visions to  the  number  of  consumers  in  any  country,  our  attention 
would  naturally  be  first  directed  to  the  increasing  of  the  absolute 
quantity  of  provisions  ;  but  finding  that  as  fast  as  we  did  this  the 
number  of  consumers  more  than  kept  pace  with  it,  and  that  with 
all  our  exertions  we  were  still  as  far  as  ever  behind,  we  should 
be  convinced  that  our  efforts  directed  only  in  this  way  would 
never  succeed.  It  would  appear  to  be  setting  the  tortoise  to  catch 
the  hare.  Finding  therefore  that  from  the  laws  of  nature  we 
could  not  proportion  the  food  to  the  population,  our  next  attempt 
should  naturally  be  to  proportion  the  population  to  the  food.  If 
we  can  persuade  the  hare  to  go  to  sleep,  the  tortoise  may  have 
some  chance  of  overtaking  her. 

We  are  not  however  to  relax  our  efforts  in  increasing  the 
quantity  of  provisions,  but  to  combine  another  effort  with  it,  that 
of  keeping  the  population,  when  once  it  has  been  overtaken,  at 
such  a  distance  behind  as  to  effect  the  relative  proportion  which 
we  desire,  and  thus  unite  the  two  grand  desiderata,  a  great  actual 
population  and  a  state  of  society  in  which  abject  poverty  and 
dependence  are  comparatively  but  little  known,  two  objects  which 
are  far  from  being  incompatible. 

If  we  be  really  serious  in  what  appears  to  be  the  object  of  such 
general  research,  the  mode  of  essentially  and  permanently  better- 
ing the  condition  of  the  poor,  we  must  explain  to  them  the  true 
nature  of  their  situation,  and  show  them  that  the  withholding  of 
the  supplies  of  labor  is  the  only  possible  way  of  really  raising  its 
price,  and  that  they  themselves  being  the  possessors  of  this  com- 
modity have  alone  the  power  to  do  this. 

I  cannot  but  consider  this  mode  of  diminishing  poverty  as 
so  perfectly  clear  in  theory,  and  so  invariably  confirmed  by  the 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  65 

analogy  of  every  other  commodity  which  is  brought  to  market, 
that  nothing  but  its  being  shown  to  be  calculated  to  produce 
greater  evils  than  it  proposes  to  remedy  can  justify  us  in  not 
making  the  attempt  to  put  it  into  execution. 

OBJECTIONS  TO  THIS  MODE  CONSIDERED 

One  objection  which  perhaps  will  be  made  to  this  plan  is  that 
from  which  alone  it  derives  its  value  —  a  market  rather  under- 
stocked with  labor.  This  must  undoubtedly  take  place  in  a  certain 
degree  ;  but  by  no  means  in  such  a  degree  as  to  affect  the  wealth 
and  prosperity  of  the  country.  But  putting  this  subject  of  a 
market  understocked  with  labor  in  the  most  unfavorable  point  of 
view,  if  the  rich  will  not  submit  to  a  slight  inconvenience  neces- 
sarily attendant  on  the  attainment  of  what  they  profess  to  desire, 
they  cannot  really  be  in  earnest  in  their  professions.  Their 
benevolence  to  the  poor  must  be  either  childish  play  or  hypocrisy; 
it  must  be  either  to  amuse  themselves  or  to  pacify  the  minds  of 
the  common  people  with  a  mere  show  of  attention  to  their  wants. 
To  wish  to  better  the  condition  of  the  poor  by  enabling  them  to 
command  a  greater  quantity  of  the  necessaries  and  comforts  of 
life,  and  then  to  complain  of  higher  wages,  is  the  act  of  a  silly 
boy  who  gives  away  his  cake  and  then  cries  for  it.  A  market 
overstocked  with  labor,  and  an  ample  remuneration  to  each 
laborer,  are  objects  perfectly  incompatible  with  each  other.  In 
the  annals  of  the  world  they  never  existed  together :  and  to 
couple  them  even  in  imagination  betrays  a  gross  ignorance  of 
the  simplest  principles  of  political  economy. 

A  second  objection  that  may  be  made  to  this  plan  is  the  dim- 
inution of  population  that  it  would  cause.  It  is  to  be  considered 
however  that  this  diminution  is  merely  relative  ;  and  when  once 
this  relative  diminution  has  been  effected  by  keeping  the  popula- 
tion stationary  while  the  supply  of  food  has  increased,  it  might 
then  start  afresh  and  continue  increasing  for  ages  with  the  increase 
of  food,  maintaining  always  nearly  the  same  relative  proportion 
to  it.  I  can  easily  conceive  that  this  country,  with  a  proper  direc- 
tion of  the  national  industry,  might  in  the  course  of  some  cen- 
turies contain  two  or  three  times  its  present  population,  and  yet 


66  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

every  man  in  the  kingdom  be  much  better  fed  and  clothed  than 
he  is  at  present.  While  the  springs  of  industry  continue  in  vigor, 
and  a  sufficient  part  of  that  industry  is  directed  to  agriculture,  we 
need  be  under  no  apprehensions  of  a  deficient  population ;  and 
nothing  perhaps  would  tend  so  strongly  to  excite  a  spirit  of 
industry  and  economy  among  the  poor  as  a  thorough  knowledge 
that  their  happiness  must  always  depend  principally  upon  them- 
selves ;  and  that,  if  they  obey  their  passions  in  opposition  to  their 
reason,  or  be  not  industrious  and  frugal  while  they  are  single  to 
save  a  sum  for  the  common  contingencies  of  the  married  state, 
they  must  expect  to  suffer  the  natural  evils  which  Providence  has 
prepared  for  those  who  disobey  its  repeated  admonitions. 

A  third  objection  which  may  be  started  to  this  plan,  and  the 
only  one  which  appears  to  me  to  have  any  kind  of  plausibility,  is 
that,  by  endeavoring  to  urge  the  duty  of  moral  restraint  on  the 
poor,  we  may  increase  the  quantity  of  vice  relating  to  the  sex. 

I  should  be  extremely  sorry  to  say  anything  which  could  either 
directly  or  remotely  be  construed  unfavorably  to  the  cause  of 
virtue  ;  but  I  certainly  cannot  think  that  the  vices  which  relate 
to  the  sex  are  the  only  vices  which  are  to  be  considered  in  a 
moral  question  ;  or  that  they  are  even  the  greatest  and  most 
degrading  to  the  human  character.  They  can  rarely  or  never  be 
committed  without  producing  unhappiness  somewhere  or  other, 
and  therefore  ought  always  to  be  strongly  reprobated  ;  but  there 
are  other  vices  the  effects  of  which  are  still  more  pernicious  ; 
and  there  are  other  situations  which  lead  more  certainly  to  moral 
offenses  than  the  refraining  from  marriage.  Powerful  as  may  be 
the  temptations  to  a  breach  of  chastity,  I  am  inclined  to  think 
that  they  are  impotent  in  comparison  of  the  temptations  arising 
from  continued  distress.  A  large  class  of  women  and  many  men, 
I  have  no  doubt,  pass  a  considerable  part  of  their  lives  consist- 
ently with  the  laws  of  chastity  ;  but  I  believe  there  will  be  found 
very  few  who  pass  through  the  ordeal  of  squalid  and  hopeless 
poverty,  or  even  of  long-continued  embarrassed  circumstances, 
without  a  great  moral  degradation  of  character.  .  .  . 

When  indigence  does  not  produce  overt  acts  of  vice,  it  palsies 
every  virtue.  Under  the  continued  temptations  to  a  breach  of 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  67 

chastity,  occasional  failures  may  take  place,  and  the  moral  sensi- 
bility in  other  respects  not  be  very  strikingly  impaired  ;  but  the 
continued  temptations  which  beset  hopeless  poverty,  and  the 
strong  sense  of  injustice  that  generally  accompanies  it  from  an 
ignorance  of  its  true  cause,  tend  so  powerfully  to  sour  the  dispo- 
sition, to  harden  the  heart,  and  deaden  the  moral  sense,  that 
generally  speaking  virtue  takes  her  flight  clear  away  from  the 
tainted  spot,  and  does  not  often  return. 

Even  with  respect  to  the  vices  which  relate  to  the  sex,  mar- 
riage has  been  found  to  be  by  no  means  a  complete  remedy. 
Among  the  higher  classes,  our  Doctors'  Commons,  and  the  lives 
that  many  married  men  are  known  to  lead,  sufficiently  prove 
this ;  and  the  same  kind  of  vice,  though  not  so  much  heard  of 
among  the  lower  classes  of  people,  is  probably  in  all  our  great 
towns  not  much  less  frequent. 

Add  to  this  that  abject  poverty,  particularly  when  joined  with 
idleness,  is  a  state  the  most  unfavorable  to  chastity  that  can  well 
be  conceived.  The  passion  is  as  strong,  or  nearly  so,  as  in  other 
situations  ;  and  every  restraint  on  it  from  personal  respect,  or  a 
sense  of  morality,  is  generally  removed.  There  is  a  degree  of 
squalid  poverty  in  which,  if  a  girl  was  brought  up,  I  should  say 
that  her  being  really  modest  at  twenty  was  an  absolute  miracle. 
Those  persons  must  have  extraordinary  minds  indeed,  and  such 
as  are  not  usually  formed  under  similar  circumstances,  who  can 
continue  to  respect  themselves  when  no  other  person  whatever 
respects  them.  If  the  children  thus  brought  up  were  even  to 
marry  at  twenty,  it  is  probable  that  they  would  have  passed  some 
years  in  vicious  habits  before  that  period.  .  .  . 

If  on  contemplating  the  increase  of  vice  which  might  contin- 
gently follow  an  attempt  to  inculcate  the  duty  of  moral  restraint, 
and  the  increase  of  misery  that  must  necessarily  follow  the 
attempts  to  encourage  marriage  and  population,  we  come  to  the 
conclusion  not  to  interfere  in  any  respect,  but  to  leave  every  man 
to  his  own  free  choice  and  responsible  only  to  God  for  the  evil 
which  he  does  in  either  way  ;  this  is  all  I  contend  for  ;  I  would 
on  no  account  do  more  ;  but  I  contend  that  at  present  we  are 
very  far  from  doing  this. 


68  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Among  the  lower  classes  of  society,  where  the  point  is  of  the 
greatest  importance,  the  poor  laws  afford  a  direct,  constant,  and 
systematical  encouragement  to  marriage  by  removing  from  each 
individual  that  heavy  responsibility  which  he  would  incur  by  the 
laws  of  nature  for  bringing  beings  into  the  world  which  he  could 
not  support.  Our  private  benevolence  has  the  same  direction  as 
the  poor  laws,  and  almost  invariably  tends  to  encourage  marriage 
and  to  equalize  as  much  as  possible  the  circumstances  of  married 
and  single  men. 

Among  the  higher  classes  of  people  the  superior  distinctions 
which  married  women  receive,  and  the  marked  inattentions  to 
which  single  women  of  advanced  age  are  exposed,  enable  many 
men  who  are  agreeable  neither  in  mind  nor  person  and  are 
besides  in  the  wane  of  life  to  choose  a  partner  among  the  young 
and  fair,  instead  of  being  confined  as  nature  seems  to  dictate  to 
persons  of  nearly  their  own  age  and  accomplishments.  It  is 
scarcely  to  be  doubted  that  the  fear  of  being  an  old  maid,  and  of 
that  silly  and  unjust  ridicule  which  folly  sometimes  attaches 
to  this  name,  drives  many  women  into  the  marriage  union  with 
men  whom  they  dislike,  or  at  best  to  whom  they  are  perfectly 
indifferent.  Such  marriages  must  to  every  delicate  mind  appear 
little  better  than  legal  prostitutions,  and  they  often  burden  the 
earth  with  unnecessary  children,  without  compensating  for  it  by 
an  accession  of  happiness  and  virtue  to  the  parties  themselves. 

Throughout  all  the  ranks  of  society  the  prevailing  opinions 
respecting  the  duty  and  obligation  of  marriage  cannot  but  have  a 
very  powerful  influence.  The  man  who  thinks  that  in  going  out 
of  the  world  without  leaving  representatives  behind  him  he  shall 
have  failed  in  an  important  duty  to  society,  will  be  disposed  to 
force  rather  than  to  repress  his  inclinations  on  this  subject ;  and 
when  his  reason  represents  to  him  the  difficulties  attending  a 
family  he  will  endeavor  not  to  attend  to  these  suggestions,  will 
still  determine  to  venture,  and  will  hope  that  in  the  discharge  of 
what  he  conceives  to  be  his  duty  he  shall  not  be  deserted  by 
Providence. 

In  a  civilized  country  such  as  England,  where  a  taste  for  the 
decencies  and  comforts  of  life  prevails  among  a  very  large  class 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  69 

of  people,  it  is  not  possible  that  the  encouragements  to  marriage 
from  positive  institutions  and  prevailing  opinions  should  entirely 
obscure  the  light  of  nature  and  reason  on  this  subject ;  but  still 
they  contribute  to  make  it  comparatively  weak  and  indistinct. 
And  till  this  obscurity  is  removed,  and  the  poor  are  undeceived 
with  respect  to  the  principal  cause  of  their  poverty,  and  taught  to 
know  that  their  happiness  or  misery  must  depend  chiefly  upon 
themselves,  it  cannot  be  said  that  with  regard  to  the  great 
question  of  marriage  we  leave  every  man  to  his  own  free  and 
fair  choice. 

EFFECTS  OF  THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  PRINCIPAL  CAUSE  OF 
POVERTY  ox  CIVIL  LIBERTY 

It  may  appear,  perhaps,  that  a  doctrine  which  attributes  the 
greatest  part  of  the  sufferings  of  the  lower  classes  of  society 
exclusively  to  themselves  is  unfavorable  to  the  cause  of  liberty, 
as  affording  a  tempting  opportunity  to  governments  of  oppressing 
their  subjects  at  pleasure  and  laying  the  whole  blame  on  the  laws 
of  nature  and  the  imprudence  of  the  poor.  \Ye  are  not,  however, 
to  trust  to  first  appearances ;  and  I  am  strongly  disposed  to 
believe  that  those  who  will  be  at  the  pains  to  consider  this 
subject  deeply  will  be  convinced  that  nothing  would  so  powerfully 
contribute  to  the  advancement  of  rational  freedom  as  a  thorough 
knowledge  generally  circulated  of  the  principal  cause  of  poverty, 
and  that  the  ignorance  of  this  cause,  and  the  natural  conse- 
quences of  this  ignorance,  form  at  present  one  of  the  chief 
obstacles  to  its  progress. 

The  pressure  of  distress  on  the  lower  classes  of  people,  together 
with  the  habit  of  attributing  this  distress  to  their  rulers,  appears 
to  me  to  be  the  rock  of  defense,  the  castle,  the  guardian  spirit  of 
despotism.  It  affords  to  the  tyrant  the  fatal  and  unanswerable 
plea  of  necessity.  It  is  the  reason  why  every  free  government 
tends  constantly  to  destruction,  and  that  its  appointed  guardians 
become  daily  less  jealous  of  the  encroachments  of  power.  It  is 
the  reason  why  so  many  noble  efforts  in  the  cause  of  freedom 
have  failed,  and  why  almost  every  revolution  after  long  and  pain- 
ful sacrifices  has  terminated  in  a  military  despotism.  While  any 


;o  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

dissatisfied  man  of  talents  has  power  to  persuade  the  lower  classes 
of  people  that  all  their  poverty  and  distress  arise  solely  from  the 
iniquity  of  the  government,  though,  perhaps,  the  greatest  part  of 
what  they  suffer  is  unconnected  with  this  cause,  it  is  evident  that 
the  seeds  of  fresh  discontents  and  fresh  revolutions  are  continu- 
ally sowing.  When  an  established  government  has  been  destroyed, 
finding  that  their  poverty  is  not  removed,  their  resentment  natur- 
ally falls  upon  the  successors  to  power ;  and  when  these  have 
been  immolated  without  producing  the  desired  effect,  other  sacri- 
fices are  called  for,  and  so  on  without  end.  Are  we  to  be 
surprised  that  under  such  circumstances  the  majority  of  well- 
disposed  people,  finding  that  a  government  with  proper  restrictions 
is  unable  to  support  itself  against  the  revolutionary  spirit,  and 
weary  and  exhausted  with  perpetual  change  to  which  they  can 
see  no  end,  should  give  up  the  struggle  in  despair,  and  throw 
themselves  into  the  arms  of  the  first  power  which  can  afford  them 
protection  against  the  horrors  of  anarchy  ?  .  .  . 

Nothing  would  so  effectually  counteract  the  mischiefs  occasioned 
by  Mr.  Paine's  Rights  of  Man  as  a  general  knowledge  of  the  real 
rights  of  man.  What  these  rights  are  it  is  not  my  business  at 
present  to  explain  ;  but  there  is  one  right  which  man  has  gener- 
ally been  thought  to  possess,  which  I  am  confident  he  neither 
does  nor  can  possess  —  a  right  to  subsistence  when  his  labor  will 
not  fairly  purchase  it.  Our  laws  indeed  say  that  he  has  this 
right,  and  bind  the  society  to  furnish  employment  and  food  to 
those  who  cannot  get  them  in  the  regular  market ;  but  in  so  doing 
they  attempt  to  reverse  the  laws  of  nature,  and  it  is  in  conse- 
quence to  be  expected  not  only  that  they  should  fail  in  their 
object,  but  that  the  poor,  who  were  intended  to  be  benefited, 
should  suffer  most  cruelly  from  the  inhuman  deceit  thus  practiced 
upon  them. 

The  Abbe  Raynal  has  said  that  "  Avant  toutes  les  loix  sociales 
I'homme  avoit  le  droit  de  subsister."  l  He  might  with  just  as 
much  propriety  have  said  that  before  the  institution  of  social  laws 
every  man  had  a  right  to  live  a  hundred  years.  Undoubtedly  he 
had  then  and  has  still  a  good  right  to  live  a  hundred  years,  nay 

1  Raynal,  Hist,  des  Inclcs,  Vol.  X,  s.  x,  p.  322,  8vo. 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  71 

a  thousand  if  he  can,  without  interfering  with  the  right  of  others 
to  live ;  but  the  affair  in  both  cases  is  principally  an  affair  of 
power  not  of  right.  Social  laws  very  greatly  increase  this  power, 
by  enabling  a  much  greater  number  to  subsist  than  could  subsist 
without  them,  and  so  far  very  greatly  enlarge  le  droit  de  subsister ; 
but  neither  before  nor  after  the  institution  of  social  laws  could  an 
unlimited  number  subsist ;  and  before  as  well  as  since,  he  who 
ceased  to  have  the  power  ceased  to  have  the  right. 

If  the  great  truths  on  these  subjects  were  more  generally  cir- 
culated and  the  lower  classes  of  people  could  be  convinced  that 
by  the  laws  of  nature,  independently  of  any  particular  institutions 
except  the  great  one  of  property,  which  is  absolutely  necessary  in 
order  to  attain  any  considerable  produce,  no  person  has  any  claim 
of  right  on  society  for  subsistence  if  his  labor  will  not  purchase 
it,  the  greatest  part  of  the  mischievous  declamation  on  the  unjust 
institutions  of  society  would  fall  powerless  to  the  ground.  The 
poor  are  by  no  means  inclined  to  be  visionary.  Their  distresses 
are  always  real,  though  they  are  not  attributed  to  the  real  causes. 
If  these  causes  were  properly  explained  to  them,  and  they  were 
taught  to  know  what  part  of  their  present  distress  was  attributable 
to  government,  and  what  part  to  causes  totally  unconnected  with 
it,  discontent  and  irritation  among  the  lower  classes  of  people 
would  show  themselves  much  less  frequently  than  at  present ;  and 
when  they  did  show  themselves  would  be  much  less  to  be  dreaded. 
The  efforts  of  turbulent  and  discontented  men  in  the  middle 
classes  of  society  might  safely  be  disregarded  if  the  poor  were  so 
far  enlightened  respecting  the  real  nature  of  their  situation  as  to 
be  aware  that  by  aiding  them  in  their  schemes  of  renovation  they 
would  probably  be  promoting  the  ambitious  views  of  others  with- 
out in  any  respect  benefiting  themselves.  .  .  .  The  most  suc- 
cessful supporters  of  tyranny  are  without  doubt  those  general 
declaimers  who  attribute  the  distresses  of  the  poor,  and  almost 
all  the  evils  to  which  society  is  subject,  to  human  institutions 
and  the  iniquity  of  governments. 


72  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

OF  OUR  RATIONAL  EXPECTATIONS  RESPECTING  THE  FUTURE 
IMPROVEMENT  OF  SOCIETY  1 

In  taking  a  general  and  concluding  view  of  our  rational  expec- 
tations respecting  the  mitigation  of  the  evils  arising  from  the 
principle  of  population,  it  may  be  observed  that  though  the  increase 
of  population  in  a  geometrical  ratio  be  incontrovertible,  and  the 
period  of  doubling  when  unchecked  has  been  uniformly  stated  in 
this  work  rather  below  than  above  the  truth  ;  yet  there  are  some 
natural  consequences  of  the  progress  of  society  and  civilization, 
which  necessarily  repress  its  full  effects.  These  are  more  particu- 
larly great  towns  and  manufactures,  in  which  we  can  scarcely 
hope,  and  certainly  not  expect,  to  see  any  very  material  change. 
It  is  undoubtedly  our  duty  and  in  every  point  of  view  highly 
desirable,  to  make  towns  and  manufacturing  employments  as  little 
injurious  as  possible  to  the  duration  of  human  life  ;  but  after  all 
our  efforts  it  is  probable  that  they  will  always  remain  less  healthy 
than  country  situations  and  country  employments,  and  conse- 
quently operating  as  positive  checks  will  diminish  in  some  degree 
the  necessity  of  the  preventive  check. 

In  every  old  state  it  is  observed  that  a  considerable  number  of 
grown-up  people  remain  for  a  time  unmarried.  The  duty  of  prac- 
ticing the  common  and  acknowledged  rules  of  morality  during  this 
period  has  never  been  controverted  in  theory,  however  it  may  have 
been  opposed  in  practice.  This  branch  of  the  duty  of  moral 
restraint  has  scarcely  been  touched  by  the  reasonings  of  this  work. 
It  rests  on  the  same  foundation  as  before,  neither  stronger  nor 
weaker.  And  knowing  how  incompletely  this  duty  has  hitherto 
been  fulfilled,  it  would  certainly  be  visionary  to  expect  that  in 
future  it  would  be  completely  fulfilled. 

The  part  which  has  been  affected  by  the  reasonings  of  this 
work  is  not  therefore  that  which  relates  to  our  conduct  during 
the  period  of  celibacy,  but  to  the  duty  of  extending  this  period 
till  we  have  a  prospect  of  being  able  to  maintain  our  children. 
And  it  is  by  no  means  visionary  to  indulge  a  hope  of  some  favor- 
able change  in  this  respect ;  because  it  is  found  by  experience 
1  This  is  the  concluding  chapter  of  the  Essay.  —  En. 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  73 

that  the  prevalence  of  this  kind  of  prudential  restraint  is  ex- 
tremely different  in  different  countries,  and  in  the  same  countries 
at  different  periods. 

It  cannot  be  doubted  that  throughout  Europe  in  general,  and 
most  particularly  in  the  northern  states,  a  decided  change  has 
taken  place  in  the  operation  of  prudential  restraint,  since  the 
prevalence  of  those  warlike  and  enterprising  habits  which  destroyed 
so  many  people.  In  later  times  the  gradual  diminution  and  almost 
total  extinction  of  the  plagues,  which  so  frequently  visited  Europe 
in  the  seventeenth  and  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  centuries, 
produced  a  change  of  the  same  kind.  And  in  this  country  it  is 
not  to  be  doubted  that  the  proportion  of  marriages  has  become 
smaller  since  the  improvement  of  our  towns,  the  less  frequent 
returns  of  epidemics,  and  the  adoption  of  habits  of  greater  clean- 
liness. During  the  late  scarcities  it  appears  that  the  number  of 
marriages  diminished  ; 1  and  the  same  motives  which  prevented 
many  people  from  marrying  during  such  a  period,  would  operate 
precisely  in  the  same  way,  if  in  future  the  additional  number  of 
children  reared  to  manhood  from  the  introduction  of  the  cow-pox, 
were  to  be  such  as  to  crowd  all  employments,  lower  the  price  of 
labor,  and  make  it  more  difficult  to  support  a  family. 

Universally,  the  practice  of  mankind  on  the  subject  of  mar- 
riage has  been  much  superior  to  their  theories ;  and  however 
frequent  may  have  been  the  declamations  on  the  duty  of  entering 
into  this  state,  and  the  advantage  of  early  unions  to  prevent  vice, 
each  individual  has  practically  found  it  necessary  to  consider  of 
the  means  of  supporting  a  family  before  he  ventured  to  take  so 
important  a  step.  That  great  vis  medicatrix  rcipublicac,  the 
desire  of  bettering  our  condition,  and  the  fear  of  making  it  worse, 
has  been  constantly  in  action,  and  has  been  constantly  directing 
people  into  the  right  road  in  spite  of  all  the  declamations  which 
tended  to  lead  them  aside.  Owing  to  this  powerful  spring  of 
health  in  every  state,  which  is  nothing  more  than  an  inference 
from  the  general  course  of  the  laws  of  nature  irresistibly  forced 
on  each  man's  attention,  the  prudential  check  to  marriage  has 
increased  in  Europe ;  and  it  cannot  be  unreasonable  to  conclude 

1  1800  and  1801. 


74  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

that  it  will  still  make  further  advances.  If  this  take  place  without 
any  marked  and  decided  increase  of  a  vicious  intercourse  with  the 
sex,  the  happiness  of  society  will  evidently  be  promoted  by  it ; 
and  with  regard  to  the  danger  of  such  increase,  it  is  con- 
solatory to  remark  that  those  countries  in  Europe  where  marriages 
are  the  latest  or  least  frequent,  are  by  no  means  particularly  dis- 
tinguished by  vices  of  this  kind.  .  .  .  Experience  seems  to  teach 
us  that  it  is  possible  for  moral  and  physical  causes  to  counteract 
the  effects  that  might  at  first  be  expected  from  an  increase  of  the 
check  to  marriage  ;  but  allowing  all  the  weight  to  these  effects 
which  is  in  any  degree  probable,  it  may  be  safely  asserted  that 
the  diminution  of  the  vices  arising  from  indigence  would  fully 
counterbalance  them  ;  and  that  all  the  advantages  of  diminished 
mortality  and  superior  comforts,  which  would  certainly  result  from 
an  increase  of  the  preventive  check,  may  be  placed  entirely  on 
the  side  of  the  gains  to  the  cause  of  happiness  and  virtue. 

It  is  less  the  object  of  the  present  work  to  propose  new  plans 
of  improving  society  than  to  inculcate  the  necessity  of  resting 
contented  with  that  mode  of  improvement  which  already  has  in 
part  been  enacted  upon  as  dictated  by  the  course  of  nature,  and 
of  not  obstructing  the  advances  which  would  otherwise  be  made 
in  this  way. 

It  would  be  undoubtedly  highly  advantageous  that  all  our  posi- 
tive institutions,  and  the  whole  tenor  of  our  conduct  to  the  poor, 
should  be  such  as  actively  to  cooperate  with  that  lesson  of  pru- 
dence inculcated  by  the  common  course  of  human  events  ;  and  if 
we  take  upon  ourselves  sometimes  to  mitigate  the  natural  punish- 
ments of  imprudence,  that  we  could  balance  it  by  increasing  the 
rewards  of  an  opposite  conduct.  But  much  would  be  done  if 
merely  the  institutions  which  directly  tend  to  encourage  marriage 
were  gradually  changed  and  we  ceased  to  circulate  opinions  and 
inculcate  doctrines  which  positively  counteract  the  lessons  of 
nature. 

The  limited  good  which  it  is  sometimes  in  our  power  to  effect 
is  often  lost  by  attempting  too  much,  and  by  making  the  adoption 
of  some  particular  plan  essentially  necessary  even  to  a  partial 
degree  of  success.  In  the  practical  application  of  the  reasonings 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  75 

of  this  work  I  hope  that  I  have  avoided  this  error.  I  wish  to 
press  on  the  recollection  of  the  reader  that  though  I  may  have 
given  some  new  views  of  old  facts,  and  may  have  indulged  in  the 
contemplation  of  a  considerable  degree  of  possible  improvement 
that  I  might  not  shut  out  that  prime  cheerer  hope,  yet  in  my 
expectations  of  probable  improvement  and  in  suggesting  the 
means  of  accomplishing  it  I  have  been  very  cautious.  The 
gradual  abolition  of  the  poor  laws  has  already  often  been  pro- 
posed in  consequence  of  the  practical  evils  which  have  been  found 
to  flow  from  them,  and  the  danger  of  their  becoming  a  weight 
absolutely  intolerable  on  the  landed  property  of  the  kingdom. 
The  establishment  of  a  more  extensive  system  of  national  educa- 
tion has  neither  the  advantage  of  novelty  with  some  nor  its  dis- 
advantages with  others  to  recommend  it.  The  practical  good 
effects  of  education  have  long  been  experienced  in  Scotland,  and 
almost  every  person  who  has  been  placed  in  a  situation  to  judge 
has  given  his  testimony  that  education  appears  to  have  a  consid- 
erable effect  in  the  prevention  of  crimes,1  and  the  promotion  of 
industry,  morality,  and  regular  conduct.  Yet  these  are  the  only 
plans  which  have  been  offered,  and  though  the  adoption  of  them 
in  the  modes  suggested  would  very  powerfully  contribute  to  for- 
ward the  object  of  this  work  and  better  the  condition  of  the  poor, 
yet  if  nothing  be  done  in  this  way  I  shall  not  absolutely  despair 
of  some  partial  good  resulting  from  the  general  effects  of  the 
reasoning.  .  .  . 

Among  the  higher  and  middle  classes  of  society  the  effect  of 
this  knowledge  will  I  hope  be  to  direct  without  relaxing  their 
efforts  in  bettering  the  condition  of  the  poor  ;  to  show  them  what 
they  can  and  what  they  cannot  do  ;  and  that  although  much  may 
be  done  by  advice  and  instruction,  by  encouraging  habits  of  pru- 
dence and  cleanliness,  by  discriminate  charity,  and  by  any  mode 

1  Mr.  Howard  found  fewer  prisoners  in  Switzerland  and  Scotland  than  in  other 
countries,  which  he  attributed  to  a  more  regular  education  among  the  lower 
classes  of  the  Swiss  and  the  Scotch.  During  the  number  of  years  which  the  late 
Mr.  Fielding  presided  at  Bow  Street  only  six  Scotchmen  were  brought  before  him. 
He  used  to  say  that  of  the  persons  committed  the  greater  part  were  Irish. — 
Preface  to  Vol.  Ill  of  the  Reports  of  the  Society  for  Bettering  the  Condition  of 
the  Poor,  p.  32. 


76  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  bettering  the  present  condition  of  the  poor  which  is  followed 
by  an  increase  of  the  preventive  check ;  yet  that  without  this  last 
effect  all  the  former  efforts  would  be  futile ;  and  that  in  any  old 
and  well-peopled  state  to  assist  the  poor  in  such  a  manner  as  to 
enable  them  to  marry  as  early  as  they  please  and  rear  up  large 
families,  is  a  physical  impossibility.  This  knowledge,  by  tending 
to  prevent  the  rich  from  destroying  the  good  effects  of  their  own 
exertions  and  wasting  their  efforts  in  a  direction  where  success  is 
unattainable,  would  confine  their  attention  to  the  proper  objects, 
and  thus  enable  them  to  do  more  good. 

Among  the  poor  themselves  its  effects  would  be  still  more 
important.  That  the  principal  and  most  permanent  cause  of 
poverty  has  little  or  no  direct  relation  to  forms  of  government  or 
the  unequal  division  of  property ;  and  that  as  the  rich  do  not  in 
reality  possess  the  power  of  finding  employment  and  maintenance 
for  the  poor,  the  poor  cannot  in  the  nature  of  things  possess  the 
rig/it  to  demand  them,  are  important  truths  flowing  from  the 
principle  of  population  which  when  properly  explained  would  by 
no  means  be  above  the  most  ordinary  comprehensions.  And  it  is 
evident  that  every  man  in  the  lower  classes  of  society  who  became 
acquainted  with  these  truths  would  be  disposed  to  bear  the  dis- 
tresses in  which  he  might  be  involved  with  more  patience  ;  would 
feel  less  discontent  and  irritation  at  the  government  and  the 
higher  classes  of  society  on  account  of  his  poverty  ;  would  be  on 
all  occasions  less  disposed  to  insubordination  and  turbulence  ;  and 
if  he  received  assistance  either  from  any  public  institution  or  from 
the  hand  of  private  charity,  he  would  receive  it  with  more  thank- 
fulness, and  more  justly  appreciate  its  value. 

If  these  truths  were  by  degrees  more  generally  known  (which 
in  the  course  of  time  does  not  seem  to  be  improbable  from  the 
natural  effects  of  the  mutual  interchange  of  opinions),  the  lower 
classes  of  people  as  a  body  would  become  more  peaceable  and 
orderly,  would  be  less  inclined  to  tumultuous  proceedings  in 
seasons  of  scarcity,  and  would  at  all  times  be  less  influenced  by 
inflammatory  and  seditious  publications  from  knowing  how  little 
the  price  of  labor  and  the  means  of  supporting  a  family  depend 
upon  a  revolution.  The*  mere  knowledge  of  these  truths,  even  if 


THE  MALTHUSIAN  THEORY  77 

they  did  not  operate  sufficiently  to  produce  any  marked  change 
in  the  prudential  habits  of  the  poor  with  regard  to  marriage, 
would  still  have  a  most  beneficial  effect  on  their  conduct  in  a 
political  light ;  and  undoubtedly  one  of  the  most  valuable  of  these 
effects  would  be  the  power  that  would  result  to  the  higher  and 
middle  classes  of  society  of  gradually  improving  their  govern- 
ments 1  without  the  apprehension  of  those  revolutionary  excesses, 
the  fear  of  which  at  present  threatens  to  deprive  Europe  even  of 
that  degree  of  liberty  which  she  had  before  experienced  to  be  prac- 
ticable, and  the  salutary  effects  of  which  she  had  long  enjoyed. 

From  a  review  of  the  state  of  society  in  former  periods  com- 
pared with  the  present,  I  should  certainly  say  that  the  evils 
resulting  from  the  principle  of  population  have  rather  diminished 
than  increased,  even  under  the  disadvantage  of  an  almost  total 
ignorance  of  the  real  cause.  And  if  we  can  indulge  the  hope  that 
this  ignorance  will  be  gradually  dissipated,  it  does  not  seem  un- 
reasonable to  expect  that  they  will  be  still  further  diminished. 
The  increase  of  absolute  population,  which  will  of  course  take 
place,  will  evidently  tend  but  little  to  weaken  this  expectation,  as 
everything  depends  upon  the  relative  proportion  between  popula- 
tion and  food,  and  not  on  the  absolute  number  of  people.  In  the 
former  part  of  this  work  it  appeared  that  the  countries  which 
possessed  the  fewest  people  often  suffered  the  most  from  the 
effects  of  the  principle  of  population ;  and  it  can  scarcely  be 
doubted  that,  taking  Europe  throughout,  fewer  famines  and  fewer 
diseases  arising  from  want  have  prevailed  in  the  last  century  than 
in  those  which  preceded  it. 

On  the  whole,  therefore,  though  our  future  prospects  respecting 
the  mitigation  of  the  evils  arising  from  the  principle  of  population 
may  not  be  so  bright  as  we  could  wish,  yet  they  are  far  from 

1  I  cannot  believe  that  the  removal  of  all  unjust  grounds  of  discontent  against 
constituted  authorities  would  render  the  people  torpid  and  indifferent  to  advan- 
tages which  are  really  attainable.  The  blessings  of  civil  liberty  are  so  great  that 
they  surely  cannot  need  the  aid  of  false  coloring  to  make  them  desirable.  I  should 
be  sorry  to  think  that  the  lower  classes  of  people  could  never  be  animated  to 
assert  their  rights  but  by  means  of  such  illusory  promises  as  will  generally  make 
the  remedy  of  resistance  much  worse  than  the  disease  which  it  was  intended 
to  cure. 


78  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

being  entirely  disheartening,  and  by  no  means  preclude  that 
gradual  and  progressive  improvement  in  human  society,  which 
before  the  late  wild  speculations  on  this  subject  was  the  object  of 
rational  expectation.  To  the  laws  of  property  and  marriage,  and 
to  the  apparently  narrow  principle  of  self-interest  which  prompts 
each  individual  to  exert  himself  in  bettering  his  condition,  we  are 
indebted  for  all  the  noblest  exertions  of  human  genius,  for  every- 
thing that  distinguishes  the  civilized  from  the  savage  state.  A 
strict  inquiry  into  the  principle  of  population  obliges  us  to  con- 
clude that  we  shall  never  be  able  to  throw  down  the  ladder  by 
which  we  have  risen  to  this  eminence  ;  but  it  by  no  means  proves 
that  we  may  not  rise  higher  by  the  same  means.  The  structure 
of  society  in  its  great  features  will  probably  always  remain  un- 
changed. We  have  every  reason  to  believe  that  it  will  always 
consist  of  a  class  of  proprietors  and  a  class  of  laborers ;  but  the 
condition  of  each  and  the  proportion  which  they  bear  to  each 
other  may  be  so  altered  as  greatly  to  improve  the  harmony  and 
beauty  of  the  whole.  It  would  indeed  be  a  melancholy  reflection 
that,  while  the  views  of  physical  science  are  daily  enlarging  so  as 
scarcely  to  be  bounded  by  the  most  distant  horizon,  the  science 
of  moral  and  political  philosophy  should  be  confined  within  such 
narrow  limits,  or  at  best  be  so  feeble  in  its  influence  as  to  be 
unable  to  counteract  the  obstacles  to  human  happiness  arising 
from  a  single  cause.  But  however  formidable  these  obstacles  may 
have  appeared  in  some  parts  of  this  work,  it  is  hoped  that  the 
general  result  of  the  inquiry  is  such  as  not  to  make  us  give  up 
the  improvement  of  human  society  in  despair.  The  partial  good 
which  seems  to  be  attainable  is  worthy  of  all  our  exertions,  is 
sufficient  to  direct  our  efforts  and  animate  our  prospects.  And 
although  we  cannot  expect  that  the  virtue  and  happiness  of  man- 
kind will  keep  pace  with  the  brilliant  career  of  physical  discovery ; 
yet  if  we  are  not  wanting  to  ourselves,  we  may  confidently  indulge 
the  hope  that  to  no  unimportant  extent  they  will  be  influenced 
by  its  progress  and  will  partake  in  its  success. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE 

The  decline  in  fertility  as  shown  by  corrected  birth  rates,  80.  —  Causes  of  the 
declining  birth  rate,  84.  —  The  natural  rate  of  population-increase  in  different 
countries,  94.  —  The  effective  desire  for  offspring,  96.  —  Spencer's  theory  of 

individuation,  100. 

[It  would  be  interesting  to  review  the  earlier  critics  of  Malthus, 
but  it  would  serve  no  essential  purpose,  interesting  and  curious 
as  many  of  their  ideas  were.  In  the  main  they  either  combat  his 
theory  on  theological  grounds,  aim  their  shafts  at  some  non- 
essential  part  of  it,  or  attempt  to  set  up  crudely  supported  theories 
of  their  own  to  demonstrate  the  baselessness  of  a  fear  of  over- 
population. The  first  attempt  to  deal  with  the  population  prob- 
lem, after  Malthus,  which  has  had  any  influence  on  present-day 
thought  was  that  of  Herbert  Spencer,  a  theory  based  upon  bio- 
logical and  physiological  postulates.  Spencer's  theory  is  worthy 
of  close  attention,  but  it  is  without  scientific  proof.  John  Rae's 
sojourn  and  observations  in  Hawaii  led  him  to  emphasize  a  psy- 
chological factor — the  desire  for  offspring  —  and  its  variability 
in  the  face  of  racial  contacts,  a  matter  also  touched  upon  by 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson.1 

The  necessity  for  a  restatement  of  the  theory  of  population  has 
been  forced  in  recent  years  not  only  by  the  development  of  the 
social  sciences,  but  by  the  declining  birth  rate,  which  Malthus  did 
not  and  could  not  foresee.  Not  only  has  the  ratio  of  births  to 
total  population  fallen,  but  the  actual  fertility  rate  has  decreased 
also.  Nevertheless  the  death  rate  has  declined  so  fast  that  the 
rate  of  natural  increase  is  as  high  as,  or  higher  than,  at  any  time  in 
the  past  hundred  years.  While  the  decrease  in  the  birth  rate 

1  The  South  Seas,  chap.  v. 
79 


80  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

calls  for  explanation,  and  while  its  bearing  on  the  future  of  the 
population  problem  must  be  analyzed,  it  remains  evident  from 
the  table  of  natural  increase  that  the  fundamental  question  of  the 
relation  of  population  to  subsistence  is  before  the  future,  as  the 
past,  for  solution.] 

4.    THE    DECLINE    OF    HUMAN    FERTILITY   IN    THE    UNITED 
KINGDOM    AND    OTHER    COUNTRIES    AS    SHOWN    BY    COR- 
RECTED   BIRTH    RATES1 

In  dealing  with  birth  statistics  one  or  the  other  of  two 
objects  may  be  desired  :  to  ascertain  the  rate  of  natural  increase 
of  a  community,  or  to  determine  its  fertility.  The  first  object  is 
achieved  by  deducting  the  crude  death  rate  from  the  birth  rate 
as  ordinarily  stated.  The  statistics  thus  obtained  are  of  great  im- 
portance as  indicating  the  results  of  the  natural  forces  at  work. 
But  they  deal  with  results  only,  and  if  the  forces  themselves  are 
to  be  made  an  object  of  inquiry,  a  rearrangement  of  the  facts 
and  their  statement  in  different  terms  from  those  of  the  crude 
birth  and  death  rates  are  necessary.  The  corrected  rate  measures 
a  force,  the  crude  rate  the  result  of  the  operation  of  this  force. 
Thus  in  the  case  of  death  rates  the  inherent  tendency  to  mortality 
is  measured,  not  by  the  crude,  but  by  the  corrected  death  rate, 
the  crude  death  rate  stating  the  result  of  the  tendency  to  death 
acting  upon  a  population  of  given  age  and  sex  constitution.  The 
Registrar-General's  reports  have  accustomed  us  to  the  distinction 
for  death  rates,  and  we  should  not  think  of  using  crude  death 
rates  as  an  index  of  mortality  in  this  sense.  But  for  birth  rates 
it  is  otherwise.  The  birth  rate  as  ordinarily  stated,  which  will  be 
referred  to  henceforward  as  the  crude  birth  rate,  is  still  generally 
employed  as  the  measure  of  the  tendency  of  a  population  to  in- 
crease by  natural  means,  no  other  measure  being  in  most  cases 
readily  available.  That  such  use  is  often  entirely  misleading  will 
be  abundantly  proved  by  numerous  specific  instances  in  the  course 
of  this  paper. 


THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE  8 1 

If  a  clue  as  to  the  future  and  an  explanation  of  past  experience 
is  required,  a  method  of  stating  the  birth  rate  analogous  to  that 
by  which  corrected  death  rates  are  obtained  is  necessary.  Such 
a  birth  rate  should  be  an  accurate  measure  of  the  tendency  of 
the  community  to  increase,  just  as  the  corrected  death  rate  forms 
an  accurate  statement  of  its  tendency  to  decrease.  _In  other  words, 
the  corrected  birth  rate  must  be  a  measure  of  fertility,  which, 
operative  in  a  population  of  given  constitution  as  to  age,  sex,  and 
conjugal  condition,  produces  as  its  result  the  crude  birth  rate.  .  .  .x 

It"*musf~"be  remembered  that  by  the  method  of  calculation 
adopted  in  this  paper,  the  influences  of  differences  in  proportion 

1  The  authors'  description  of  their  method  of  calculating  corrected  birth  rates 
is  given  in  the  Journal  of  Hygiene,  Vol.  V,  No.  2,  April,  1905. 

In  order  fairly  to  compare  the  fertility  of  two  populations,  or  of  the  same 
population  at  different  periods,  it  is  necessary  to  take  some  community  of  known 
age.  sex,  and  marital  condition,  find  in  said  community  the  actual  birth  rate  in 
each  age  group  of  married  women  of  childbearing  age,  if  we  are  seeking  legiti- 
mate birth  rates  (or  of  all  women  of  childbearing  age,  if  we  are  seeking  "total" 
birth  rates),  and  to  regard  these  rates  by  age  groups  as  standard  fertility  rates  for 
those  groups.  The  authors  chose  the  rates  of  Sweden  in  1891  as  the  standard. 
Secondly,  knowing  the  age,  sex,  and  marital  distribution  of  the  population  of  Eng- 
land and  Wales  in  1901,  they  find  for  each  age  group  of  married  women  of  child- 
bearing  age  (15-20,  20-25,  etc.)  the  number  of  children  that  would  have  been  born 
in  England  and  Wales  had  the  women  there  had  the  same  actual  fertility,  age  for 
age,  as  those  in  Sweden  in  1891.  This  gives  a  hypothetical  legitimate  birth  rate, 
calculated  on  the  whole  population,  of  34.91,  and  this  rate  the  authors  take  as 
their  standard  birth  rate  with  which  other  birth  rates  are  compared.  Thirdly,  sup- 
pose we  wish  to  compare  the  fertility  of  London  women  with  those  of  England 
and  Wales  as  a  whole.  In  the  same  way  a  standard  birth  rate  for  London  is  cal- 
culated. It  represents  the  birth  rate  London  -would  have  had,  had  London  women 
in  1901  been  of  the  same  fertility  as  Swedish  women  in  1891.  It  turns  out  to  be 
36.95.  The  cniestion  is_i£  London  had  had.  the  same  age,  sexj  and  marital  distribu- 
tion of  its  population  as  Jiad  England  and  Wales,  what  would  its  crude  birth  rate 
have  beenj^  This  is  the  "  corrected  birth  rate  "  for  which  we  are  seeking.  Xhe 

ratio  of  the  standard  rate  of  England  and  Wales  to  that  of  London  is  ~-  —  or 

36-95 

.9448.  The  standard  rate  of  England  and  Wales,  in  other  words,  is  only  94.48  per 
cent  of  that  of  London  because  London  has  an  age,  sex," and  conjugal  distribution 
of  its  population  more  favorable  to  childbearing  than  have  England  and  Wales 
at  large.  It  follows  that  if  we  multiply  the  actual  recorded  London  rate  by  this 
"factor  of  correction"  (.9448)  we  shall  get  a  figure  which  represents  the  birth 
rate  London  would  have  had  had  its  population  been  of  the  same  age,  sex,  and 
conjugal  distribution  as  that  of  England  and  Wales.  Since  London's  crude  birth 
rate  in  1901  was  27.42,  its  corrected  birth  rate  was  0.9448(27.42).  or  25.91.  The 
factor  of  correction  is  of  course  different  for  each  community.  —  Eu. 


82  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  wives  and  in  the  ages  of  these  wives  has  been  eliminated,  and 
we  are  thus  enabled  to  separate  between  what  we  may  call  the 
arithmetical  and  the  pathological  causes  of  decline  in  the  birth 
rate.  France  is  the  best  instance  of  a  pathological  birth  rate. 
The  term  ("  natalite  pathologique" )  is  used  by  Dr.  Jacques 
Bertillon,  the  head  of  the  Statistical  Bureau  of  the  City  of  Paris. 
France  has  rather  a  larger  number  of  wives  aged  15-45  than 
England  and  Wales  per  1000  of  total  population.  But  its  cor- 
rected legitimate  birth  rate  is  29  per  cent  lower,  and  its  total 
corrected  birth  rate  24  per  cent  lower  than  that  of  England  and 
Wales.  Ireland,  on  the  other  hand,  has  a  low  crude  birth  rate, 
which  becomes  one  of  the  highest  in  Europe  when  correction  is 
made  for  the  fact  that  only  76.5  per  1000  of  population,  as 
compared  with  117.0  for  England  and  Wales,  are  wives  at 
childbearing  age,  only  32.5  per  cent  of  the  women  aged  15-45 
being  married,  as  compared  with  46.8  per  cent  in  England  and 
Wales.  .  .  . 

In  Tuble  A  the  chief  communities  are  set  forth  in  the  order 
of  their  total  corrected  birth  rates  in  1880  or  1881  and  m 
1901-1904. 

At  the  earlier  period,  Germany,  Belgium,  and  Norway  headed 
the  list.  At  the  later  period  the  position  of  Germany  as  a  whole 
has  receded,  Ireland  now  preceding  it.  England  and  Wales  is 
next  lowest  to  France  at  both  periods.  If  the  countries  be  classi- 
fied according  to  the  percentage  decline  of  total  annual  birth  rate 
which  has  occurred  during  twenty-two  years,  New  South  Wales 
comes  first  with  a  decline  of  32  per  cent,  Victoria  next  with  a 
decline  of  25  per  cent,  then  Belgium  with  24  per  cent  decline, 
Saxony  23  per  cent,  New  Zealand  19  per  cent,  and  England  and 
Wales  1 8  per  cent.  The  smallest,  declines  occurred  in  Austria 
-  i  per  cent,  Norway  and  Sweden  6  per  cent  each,  and  Italy 
9  per  cent ;  Ireland  showed  an  increase  of  3  per  cent. 

Among  the  cities  given  in  the  table,  the  total  birth  rates  of 
London,  Berlin,  and  Dublin  were  nearly  equal  in  1881,  the  birth 
rates  of  Hamburg  and  Edinburgh  being  higher  than  these,  and 
that  of  Paris  very  much  lower.  In  1903  Paris  is  still  lowest,  but 
Berlin  is  rapidly  approximating  to  it  ;  next  comes  Sidney  and 


THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE  83 

Melbourne,  then  in  order  Hamburg,  London  and  Edinburgh. 
The  greatest  decline  among  the  cities  was  34  per  cent  in  Berlin  ; 
next  came  Paris  with  a  decline  of  28  per  cent,  followed  by  Edin- 
burgh with  a  decline  of  20  per  cent,  and  London  with  a  decline 
of  17  per  cent.  The  earlier  corrected  birth  rates  for  Melbourne 
and  Sidney  could  not  be  calculated  for  lack  of  the  necessary  data. 


TABLE  A 


COMMUNITIES  IN  ORDER 
OF  TOTAL  CORRECTED 
BIRTH  RATE,  1880-1881 

CORRECTED 
BIKTH   RATE 
PER  IOOO  OF 
POPULATION 

COMMUNITIES  IN  ORDER 
OF  TOTAL  CORRECTED 
BIRTH  RATE,  1901-1904 

CORRECTED 
BIRTH  RATE 
PER  IOOO  OF 
POPULATION 

PERCENTAGE 
DECLINE  IN  COR- 
RECTED BIRTH 
RATE 

Total 

Legiti- 
mate 

Total 

Legiti- 
mate 

In  total 
birth 
rate 

In  legiti- 
mate 
birth  rate 

45-49 
41.45 
40.76 

40-37 
40.12 

39-8? 
39-29 
39-04 
38.92 
38.80 

38-49 
36.89 
36.68 
36.02 
35-17 
34-9S 
34-97 
34-65 
33-11 
32-24 
32.21 
25.06 
23.27 

39-55 
35-05 
38.06 

36-44 
37-59 
36-54 
36-47 
32.86 

35-36 
36.53 
35-56 
33-40 
34-88 
34-25 
34-59 
3i-35 
32.93 
32.73 
28.26 
31.61 
30.92 

22.73 
16.46 

Bavaria    

40-37 
38.50 

37-79 
36.19 
36.08 
35-72 
35-39 
35-34 
33-7i 
33-38 
33-12 
3J-76 
31.01 
29.63 
28.41 
28.08 

27-04 
26.83 
26.47 
25.40 
24-07 
23.89 
21.89 
21.63 
16.65 

35-59 

32.84 
35-62 
32.90 

35-59 
32-72 
34-58 
32.01 

3i-i7 
3r-65 
29.94 
26.60 
28.85 
28.44 
27.29 
26.68 
25-77 
25-93 
24.61 
21.70 
22.26 
21.58 
18.57 
19.29 
11.98 

—  1  1 
—  I 
-6 
-6 
+  3 

—  10 
+  10 
—  12 

-9 

-15 

-r5 

-23 
-24 
-19 

-18 
—  20 
-25 
-r7 

-32 
-27 

-34 
-14 
-28 

—  IO 

±0 

-5 
-7 
+  3 
—  n 

+  9 

—  12 

-7 
-J3 
-J5 
-24 
-24 
-18 

-17 
-19 

-25 
-16 

-33 
-31 

-34 
-'5 
-27 

Saxony    

Austria    

Belgium  

Norway   

German  Empire  .    . 
Norway   

Sweden  

Ireland    

Prussia    

Prussia    

Scotland      .... 
Austria    

Dublin     

German  Empire  .     . 
Italy    

Denmark     .... 
New  South  Wales  . 
Sweden   

Scotland      .... 
Denmark     .... 
Saxony    ... 

Italy              .... 

New  Zealand  .     .     . 
Victoria        .... 

Belgium  

New  Zealand  .     .     . 
England  and  Wales 
Edinburgh   .... 

Victoria  . 

Ireland    

Hamburg     .... 
Edinburgh    .... 
England  and  Wales 

Berlin                .     .     . 

London    

New  South  Wales  . 
Hamburg     .... 
^Melbourne   .... 
Sidney      

Dublin     

London    
France     

Paris    

Berlin      

France 

Paris   

READINGS  IN   SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


CAUSES  OF  DECLINE  OF  BIRTH   RATE 

The  preceding  detailed  analysis  of  corrected  birth  statistics 
makes  it  practicable  to  draw  certain  conclusions  on  the  subject. 
It  must  still  be  remembered  that  we  are  dealing  with  the  problem 
of  fertility,  in  the  main  that  of  married  life,  after  arithmetical 
sources  of  incomparability  have  been  removed. 

It  is  clear  that  in  the  majority  of  countries  for  which  corrected 
statistics  could  be  calculated  there  has  been  a  great  decline  in  the 
corrected  legitimate  birth  rate  and  an  even  greater  decline  in  the 
cprrected  illegitimate  birth  rate.  It  is  unfortunate  that  data  ena- 
bling corrected  statistics  for  Russia,  the  United  States,  and  for 
Canada  to  be  calculated  could  not  be  obtained.  The  French 
Catholic  population  of  Canada  are  known  to  have  an  exceptionally 
high  birth  rate.  The  decline  in  the  legitimate  birth  rate,  shown 
in  Table  A,  might  be  due  either  to  an  increased  number  of  sterile 
marriages,  or  to  smaller  families.  French,  Danish,  Swedish, 
Australian,  and  other  statistics  agree  in  showing  that  it  is  the 
latter  phenomenon  with  which  we  are  chiefly,  if  not  solely  con- 
cerned.1 If  the  decline  was  due  to  physical  degeneration  affect- 
ing the  reproductive  powers,  a  decrease  of  fecundity,  or,  in  other 
words,  an  increased  number  of  sterile  marriages,  would  be  rea- 
sonably expected  ;  this  has  not  occurred.  This  fact  at  once  raises 
the  presumption  that  the  fall  in  the  birth  rate  is  due  to  conditions 
within  the  control  of  the  people,  and  is,  as  sometimes  described, 
a  form  of  social  felo-de-se. 

Urbanization.  We  have  already  compared  urban  and  rural 
birth  rates  in  1881  and  1903,  and  compared  1881  with  1903. 2 

1  In  New  South  Wales*  the  fecund  marriages  per  1000  total  marriages  were  : 


At  age  

i  ; 

20 

2; 

}° 

40 

4^ 

.'J 

In  period  1871-1880     .... 

987 

9/2 

94  cS 

897 

So  i 

576 

2/5 

In  period  iS(ji-iS<|-     .... 

978 

048 

019 

852 

706 

410 

92 

Percentage  decline 

•'» 

2-5 

3-i 

5.0 

11.  <j 

2S.S 

66.5 

*  Report  of  Royal  Commission  on    Decline  of   I'.irth    Rate.  etc..  in  New  South   Wales, 
Vol.   I,  p.  f><).    The  decline  in  fecundity  shown  above  is  extremely  small  as  compared  with 
that  in  fertility. 

-  This  part  of  the  discussion  is  omitted. 


THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE 


The  steady  increase  of  urbanization  of  the  population  in  every 
civilized  country  is  not,  per  sc,  a  cause  of  lowered  birth  rate. 
On  any  such  supposition  one  cannot  explain  the  relatively  high 
birth  rate  of  a  large  number  of  towns  in  1881,  and  of  Dublin 
and  Belfast  in  1903.  This  conclusion  is  confirmed  by  a  com- 
parison of  the  selected  urban  and  rural  counties  of  England  and 
Wales  in  1881  and  1903.  In  1881  the  selected  urban  counties 
had  a  relative  corrected  legitimate  birth  rate  (figure  of  merit) 
represented  by  the  figure  92.0,  the  selected  rural  counties  a  rela- 
tive corrected  birth  rate  represented  by  the  figure  97. 7.1  Here 
was  a  material  difference.  In  1903  the  corresponding  figures 
were  77.9  and  80.3.  Both  now  have  a  much  reduced  birth  rate, 
the  decline  of  the  rural  being  greater  than  that  of  the  urban  birth 
rate  (18  per  cent  as  compared  with  15  per  cent). 

The  four  last  counties  in  the  following  table  may  be  taken  as 
further  special  examples  having  chiefly  rural  populations  : 


COKKECTED  LEGITIMATE  BlRTH  RATE 

PEK  CENT  REDUCTION 

1881 

1903 

England  and  Wales  .     . 
London      

32-73 
30.92 
32.61 

33-97 
3546 
36-39 

27.29 
25.91 
25.11 
26.80 
25.11 
26.04 

I? 

16 

:31 

1  M  Rural 
29 

28  J 

counties) 

Bedfordshire     .... 
Berkshire  
Cornwall    

Rutland     

Summing  up  the  evidence  as  to  rural  and  urban  birth  rates  in 
this  country,  it  may  be  said  that  (i)  rural  birth  rates  have  declined 
more  than  urban  birth  rates,  and  are  approximating  to  the  latter; 
(2)  there  is  no  essential  reason  why  the  urban  should  be  lower 
than  the  rural  birth  rates. 

The  fact  that  in  Germany  the  reduction  of  the  birth  rate  is 
chiefly  shown  in  its  great  cities,  is  an  indication  not  that  urbani- 
zation favors  a  low  birth  rate,  but  that  the  operative  causes  of  a 
low  birth  rate  have  not  yet  affected  the  rural  population  of  that 
country  to  an5r  great  extent. 

1  The  "figure  of  merit"  is  a  percentage  of  the  Swedish  rate  of  1891,  taken  as 
a  base  (100).  —  ED. 


86  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Industrial  Conditions.  These  are  difficult  to  separate  from 
social  conditions,  to  be  considered  later,  but  one  or  two  indications 
may  be  mentioned  in  this  connection.  In  1881  the  agricultural 
counties  showed  the  highest  fertility.  In  1903  this  difference  had 
largely  disappeared.  A  table,  not  here  reproduced,  was  prepared 
showing  that  both  great  and  small  declines  in  birth  rate  have 
occurred  among  the  counties  which  have  the  highest  proportion 
of  persons  engaged  in  agriculture.  In  New  Zealand  the  popula- 
tion is  largely  agricultural,  but  it  now  has  a  corrected  total  birth 
rate  not  much  higher  than  that  of  England,  and  its  corrected  total 
birth  rate  has  declined  19  per  cent  in  the  same  twenty-two  years 
in  which  that  of  England  has  declined  18  per  cent.  The  exces- 
sively low  birth  rates  of  Huddersfield,  Halifax  and  Bradford  do 
not  reasonably  lend  themselves  to  the  suggestion  that  employment 
in  the  woolen  and  worsted  industries  is  concerned  in  producing 
a  low  birth  rate  ; 1  nor  do  the  percentages  of  women  industrially 
occupied  in  different  counties  vary  with  variations  in  the  birth 
rate.  The  mining  counties  are,  however,  among  those  having  the 
highest  birth  rate. 

Race.  According  to  the  figures  of  1881,  Scotland,  Bavaria, 
Belgium,  Norway,  Prussia,  New  South  Wales,  Sweden,  Denmark, 
Saxony,  and  New  Zealand  all  had  corrected  birth  rates  over  the 
standard  ;  while  urban  communities  like  Paris,  Kensington, 
Bradford,  Berlin,  Huddersfield,  etc.,  were  far  below  the  standard. 
There  is  no  evidence  of  differences  of  race  fertility  among  these 
civilized  races,  whatever  may  be  the  case  among  races  for  whom 
exact  and  corrected  statistics  are  unattainable.  In  1903  we  can- 
not expect  to  be  able  to  institute  comparisons  of  race,  for  other 
causes  of  variation  are  evidently  in  overwhelming  operation. 

Religion.  In  1881  there  was  no  evidence  of  any  connection 
between  the  manner  of  life  involved  in  any  religious  persuasion 
and  birth  rate.  Bavaria  (113.3),  Belgium  (109.0),  and  Ireland 

1  Ethel  M.  Elderton,  after  an  elaborate  analysis  of  the  data,  arrives  at  a  con- 
flicting conclusion,  that  "  the  fall  in  the  birth  rate  has  been  mflst  marked  where 
women  are  industrially  employed."  (Report  on  the  English  Birth  Rate,  Part  I, 
England  North  of  the  I  lumber.  Eugenics  Laboratory  Memoirs,  XIX  and  XX 
(1914),  p.  215). —En. 


THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE  87 

(99.1),  which  are  chiefly  Roman  Catholic,  may  be  set  against 
Norway  (107.7),  Prussia  (104.7),  and  Scotland  (104. 5).1 

In  1902-1903  it  is  otherwise.  The  high  fertility  of  French 
Catholic  Canadians  is  well  known,  though  exact  statistics  cannot 
be  given  here.  Bavaria  (101.9)  and  Ireland  (101.9)  nave  still 
birth  rates  over  the  standard,  and  are  alone  in  this  respect,  ex- 
cepting Norway  (102.0).  Italy  (95.7  in  1881  and  89.3  in  1903) 
and  France  (65.1  in  1881  and  55.3  in  1903)  are  exceptions  to 
the  rule,  but  there  is  little  doubt  that  in  both  these  countries 
orthodox  religious  restraints  have  greatly  diminished.  Austria 
(94.1  in  1 88 1  and  94.1  in  1901)  remains  stationary,  and  is  the 
best  example  of  constancy  of  corrected  birth  rate  in  a  Roman 
Catholic  country. 

Social  Conditions,  including'  Poverty.  The  view  usually  taken 
is  that  fertility  declines  with  increased  prosperity.  It  undoubtedly 
is  lower  in  the  higher  social  strata,  and  diminishes  in  many  com- 
munities with  increase  of  prosperity.  It  may,  however,  be  consid- 
ered an  open  question  whether  this  change  is  partly  physiological 
or  is  entirely  due  to  artificial  means.  In  England,  in  Germany, 
and  in  other  countries  the  birth  rate  has  declined  with  general 
increase  of  social  comfort.  Ireland  is  the  only  country  on  our 
list  in  which  with  some  probable  increase  of  general  welfare  the 
birth  rate  has  increased.  The  instance  of  Ireland  is  somewhat 
complicated,  for  in  1881  there  was  a  much  greater  amount  of 
assisted  emigration  than  in  1903,  and  it  is  possible  that  the  popu- 
lation withdrawn  at  the  earlier  period  was  more  prolific  than  that 
left  in  Ireland.  On  the  other  hand,  Ireland  is  a  chiefly  Roman 
Catholic  country,  in  which  preventive  measures  against  child- 
bearing  are  banned,  and  the  birth  rate  represents  in  the  main  the 
true  fertility  of  the  country  ;  while  in  Germany  and  in  England 
the  birth  rate  is  the  resultant  of  two  forces,  the  relative  magni- 
tude of  which  is  unknown,  namely,  natural  fertility,  and  artificial 
measures  against  it.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  up  to  a  certain  point 
improvement  in  prosperity  favors  fertility,  though  beyond  this  it 
may  act,  to  a  limited  extent,  in  the  opposite  direction.  Tak- 
ing countries  as  a  whole,  there  cannot  be  said  to  be  any  direct 

1  These  are  "  figures  of  merit."- —  En. 


88 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


relationship  either  in  1881  or  in  1902-1903  between  the  degree  of 
national  prosperity  and  fertility.  Norway  and  Ireland,  both  rela- 
tively poor  countries,  have  a  high  fertility,  but  Bavaria  and 
France,  which  are  relatively  more  prosperous,  have  one  a  high 
and  the  other  a  low  birth  rate.  The  fact  that  in  Bradford,  Berlin, 
Huddersfield,  Halifax,  etc.,  as  well  as  in  Paris  as  early  as  1881, 
a  low  birth  rate  was  already  experienced,  shows  that  high  indus- 
trial and  general  prosperity  may  be  associated  with  a  low  birth 
rate.  Instances  of  a  similar  kind  are  much  more  numerous  in 
recent  years.  The  cases  of  Hampstead,  Kensington,  and  Bourne- 
mouth suggest  an  inverse  relationship  between  fertility  and  pros- 
perity. The  greater  decline  of  fertility  in  Huddersfield,  Halifax, 
Burnley,  Blackburn,  and  Bradford  than  in  Bethnal  Green,  Glas- 
gow, Manchester,  or  Leeds  suggests  that  the  skilled  artisan  class, 
which  probably  form  a  larger  proportion  of  the  population  of  the 
former  towns  than  of  the  latter,  are  adding  less  to  the  population 
than  the  class  of  unskilled  workers.  But  such  statements  must  be 
regarded  rather  in  the  nature  of  surmise  than  entirely  justified  by 
the  facts.  The  following  study  of  metropolitan  statistics  gives 
more  exact  data  for  forming  a  judgment  on  this  question. 

FERTILITY  OF  GROUPS  OF  LONDON  BOROUGHS  CLASSIFIED 
ACCORDING  TO  SOCIAL  POSITION 

In  a  paper  read  at  the  meeting  of  the  International  Statistical 
Institute  at  St.  Petersburg,  1897,  Dr.  Jaques  Bertillon  gave  the 
following  statistics  as  to  the  annual  births  per  1000  women  aged 
fifteen  to  fifty  in  different  quarters  of  the  undernoted  cities : 

TABLE  B 


CLASSIFICATION 

PARIS 

BERLIN 

VIENNA 

LONDON 

Very  poor  quarters    

1  08 

I  <w 

''OO 

I  47 

Poor  quarters     
Comfortable  quarters     

95 

129 
I  14 

,64 

I  r  c 

[40 
I  O7 

Very  comfortable  quarters     .... 
Rich  quarters     

65 

;  ^ 

96 
6l 

'53 

IO7 

107 
8? 

Very  rich  quarters     

~u 

17 

7  I 

6l 

Average      

(So 

IO2 

I  c^ 

IOQ 

THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE 


89 


Dr.  Bertillon  has  since  kindly  supplied  to  one  of  us  the 
following  statement  of  the  number  of  legitimate  births  per  1000 
married  women  aged  fifteen  to  fifty  in  Paris  and  Berlin  : 


TABLE  C 


CLASSIFICATION 

PARIS 

BERLIN 

Very  poor  quarters    

I  J.7 

i  I  A 

Poor  quarters     

128 

198 

Comfortable  quarters     

IOQ 

IO2 

Very  comfortable  quarters     
Rich  quarters 

96 

ClA 

172 
T/1  C 

Very  rich  quarters      

6<; 

IT 

In  the  following  table  we  have  made  a  similar  calculation  for 
London,  substituting  the  more  complete  correction  described  in 
this  paper  for  the  method  of  correction  used  in  Table  B.  The 
metropolitan  boroughs  have  been  divided  into  six  groups,  which 
generally  resemble  Dr.  Bertillon's  groups.  The  classification  has 
been  based  on  the  average  number  of  domestic  servants  to  every 
100  families  as  displayed  by  the  census  returns  for  1901. 

TABLE  D.    GROUPS  OF  METROPOLITAN  BOROUGHS 


NUMBER   OF 

RELATIVE   CORRECTED 

DOMESTIC 

CORRECTED  BIRTH  RATE,   1903 

BIRTH  RATE,  THAT  OF 

SERVANTS 

LONDON  BEING  TAKEN 

AS     IOO 

I'EK    IOO 

FAMILIES 

Legitimate 

Illegitimate 

Total 

Legitimate 

Illegitimate 

Group  i     ... 

Under  10 

30.78 

0.78 

3'-56 

I  18.8 

85.7 

Group  2     ... 

10-20 

24.81 

I.OI 

25.82 

95-8 

I  II.  I 

Group  3     ... 

20-30 

24.90 

0.73 

25.63 

96.1 

80.2 

Group  4    ... 

30-40 

24.82 

0.68 

25-5° 

95-8 

74-7 

Group  5     ... 

40-50 

23.62 

1.741 

--5-3^ 

91.2 

191.2 

Group  6    ... 

Over  60 

20.04 

0.41 

20.45 

77-3 

45-1 

Total  .... 

25.91 

0.91 

26.82 

1  00.0 

IOO.O 

Group  i.  Census  population,  1901  =  1,154,142,  comprises  Shoreditch,  Beth- 
nal  Green,  liermondsey,  Southwark,  Poplar,  Finsbury,  and  Stepney. 

1  The  excessive  illegitimate  birth  rate  in  Group  5  was  due  entirely  to  the  high 
rate  in  Marylebone,  in  which  is  situated  Queen  Charlotte's  Lying-in  Hospital. 


90  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Group  2.  Census  population,  1901  =  1,996,825,  comprises  Battersea,  Wool- 
wich, Camberwell,  Deptford,  Islington,  St.  Pancras,  Hackney,  Lambeth, 
Fulham,  Hammersmith. 

Group  j.  Census  population,  1901  =  206,422,  comprises  Holborn,  Green- 
wich, Stoke  Newington. 

Gtoup  4.  Census  population,  1901  =386,452,  comprises  Wandsworth,  Lewis- 
ham,  City  of  London. 

Group 5.  Census  population,  1901=351,119,  comprises  Paddington,  Mary- 
lebone,  Chelsea. 

Group  6.  Census  population,  1901=441,581,  comprises  Westminster,  Ken- 
sington, Hampstead. 

It  will  be  observed  that  Groups  2,  3,  4,  and  5,  comprising 
64.8  per  cent  of  the  total  population  of  London,  had  a  corrected 
total  birth  rate  which  only  varied  between  25.36  and  25.82.  The 
two  extreme  groups  show  marked  differences,  the  rich  districts 
at  one  end  of  the  scale  having  a  corrected  total  birth  rate  of 
20.45,  and  the  very  poor  districts  at  the  other  end  of  the  scale 
a  corrected  total  birth  rate  of  31.56  per  1000  of  population. 
The  former  of  these  birth  rates  affects  9.7  per  cent,  the  latter 
25.4  per  cent  of  the  total  population  of  London. 

The  above  facts  suggest  the  conclusion  that  among  the  rich 
in  London  the  prevention  of  childbearing  is  systematically  and 
largely  practiced,  that  among  the  very  poor  the  practice  is  proba- 
bly almost  unknown,  and  that  the  mass  of  the  population  which 
lies  between  these  two  social  extremes  occupies  an  intermediate 
position  in  regard  to  such  preventive  measures. 

SOCIAL  SUICIDE 

The  last  sentence  anticipates  the  general  conclusion  to  which 
an  impartial  view  of  the  whole  field  of  corrected  facts  seems  to 
us  inevitably  to  lead. 

The  decline  of  birth  rate  is  not  due  to  increased  poverty. 

It  is  associated  with  a  general  raising  of  the  standard  of  com- 
fort, and  is  an  expression  of  the  determination  of  the  people  to 
secure  this  greater  comfort. 

It  is  not  caused  by  greater  stress  in  modern  life,  but  is  a  con- 
sequence of  the  greater  desire  for  luxury.  Possibly  the  raising 
of  the  age  for  leaving  school,  and  allied  changes  as  to  work, 


THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE  91 

have  aided  in  producing  the  result,  by  preventing  children  being 
an  early  source  of  profit.  These  and  allied  motives  have  made 
parents  look  round  for  the  means  of  keeping  their  families 
within  "  prudent "  limits.  The  gradual  slackening  of  the  religious 
restraints,  which  were  formerly  to  a  much  greater  extent  associ- 
ated with  family  life,  have  doubtless  aided  in  making  husbands 
and  wives  willing  to  utilize  such  preventive  means  as  they  have 
been  able  to  discover.  Increased  education  has  helped  in  securing 
access  to  the  necessary  information,  and  the  greater  aggregation 
of  populations  in  towns  has  doubtless  supplied  not  only  increased 
facilities  for  the  communication  of  information  on  the  subject,  but 
also  for  the  purchase  of  the  necessary  appliances.  Many  druggists 
are  stated  to  make  a  large  share  of  their  income  in  this  way.1 

A  marked  impetus  in  this  direction  was  given  in  England  by 
notorious  trials  in  1877.  The  special  experience  of  towns  like 
Halifax,  Huddersfield  and  Northampton  implies,  and  is  known 
to  be  associated  with,  a  special  local  propagandism.  What  caused 
the  earlier  implication  of  France  in  this  policy  of  short-sighted 
prudential  selfishness  it  would  be  beyond  the  scope  of  this  paper 
to  discuss. 

The  examples  already  given  indicate  that  the  "gospel  of  com- 
fort" has  been  widely  adopted,  and  that  it  is  becoming  the  prac- 
tical ethical  standard  of  a  rapidly  increasing  number  of  civilized 
communities,  both  in  this  country  and  abroad.  The  selected  rural 
counties  in  this  country  have  now  approximated  to  the  urban 
counties.  Prussia  has  not  yet  overtaken  Berlin,  but  it  is  following 
its  example.  We  have  no  hope  that  any  nation  —  in  the  absence 
of  strong  and  overwhelming  moral  influences  to  the  contrary  — 
will  be  permanently  left  behind  in  this  race  to  decimate  the  race. 
We  must  look  —  failing  the  possibility  indicated  in  the  last  sen- 
tence —  for  an  increasing  practice  of  the  artificial  prevention  of 
childbearing,  which,  whatever  may  be  said  for  exceptional  in- 
stances, is  at  least  difficult  to  justify  when  used  merely  as  a  sup- 
posed means  towards  increased  social  comfort.  And  with  this  we 
must  look  for  a  lower  standard  of  moral  outlook,  a  lowering  of 
the  ideal  of  married  life,  and  a  consequent  deterioration  of  the 

1  See  Report  of  New  South  Wales  Royal  Commission,  p.  15. 


92  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

moral,  if  not  also  of  the  physical  nature  of  mankind.  France  has 
anticipated  the  rest  of  the  world,  and  has  thus  come  near  the 
consummation  of  its  social  felo-de-se.  But  it  is  only  a  question  of 
decades,  in  the  absence  of  a  great  change  in  the  moral  stand- 
point of  the  majority  of  the  people,  before  others  follow  in  the 
same  direction,  possibly  even  at  the  same  pace.  The  outlook  is 
gloomy,  and  we  cannot  look  with  confidence  to  the  help  which 
is  likely  to  come  either  from  preaching  or  medical  teaching. 

WJiat  is  tJic  Bearing  of  tJic  Preceding  Facts  on  tJic  Future 
Welfare  of  Mankind?  It  is  by  no  means  certain  that  children 
will  be  better  reared  because  less  numerous.  Comparisons  of  in- 
fantile mortality  are  somewhat  fallacious.  Although  it  is  true  that 
infantile  mortality  is  usually  highest  in  the  districts  having  a  very 
high  birth  rate,  this  is  probably  clue  to  the  fact  that  such  high 
birth  rates  occur  in  communities  of  low  social  position,  and  that 
the  facts  connoted  by  social  position,  and  not  the  high  birth  rate, 
are  the  cause  of  the  high  infantile  mortality.  With  the  decreas- 
ing birth  rate  in  England  and  Wales,  there  has  been  no  reduction 
of  infantile  mortality.1 

The  fact  that  the  birth  rate  is  much  smaller  in  higher  than  in 
lower  social  strata,  has  given  rise  to  many  Cassandra-like  utter- 
ances. But  there  has  always  been  a  great  difference  between  the 
two  ;  and  it  is  notorious  that  branches  of  the  aristocracy  have 
only  been  kept  alive  by  engrafting  from  other  social  strata. 
There  are,  unfortunately,  but  few  facts  bearing  on  the  question 
whether  the  reduction  of  the  birth  rate  is  greater  in  the  higher 
than  in  the  lower  social  strata.  Between  1881  and  1903  the 
corrected  legitimate  birth  rate  of  London  declined  16  per  cent, 
that  of  England  and  Wales  17  per  cent,  that  of  Kensington 
19  per  cent,  of  Brighton  20  per  cent,  and  of  Hampstead  36  per 
cent,  which,  if  the  examples  are  not  exceptional,  seems  to  indi- 
cate that  the  population  is  now  being  replenished  in  a  higher 
proportion  than  formerly  from  the  lower  strata  of  society.  Whether 

1  In  18711-1883  the  infantile  death  rate  in  Kngland  and  Wales  averaged  139, 
in  1899-190^  it  averaged  147,  per  1000  births.  In  London  the  infantile  death  rate 
in  1879-1X83  was  150  per  1000  births,  and  in  181)9-190:;  the  same.  |  liut  since 
1903  the  decline  in  the  infant  death  rate  has  been  very  appreciable. —  Ko.J 


THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE 


93 


this  means  that  the  less  fit  are  now  contributing  a  greater  share 
to  the  general  population  than  in  the  past  is  by  no  means  certain. 
Very  few  would  venture  to  assert  that  the  line  of  intellectual 
ability  or  of  physical  endurance  is  horizontal  and  not  oblique, 
or  possibly  almost  perpendicular  in  relation  to  social  position. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  the  contribution  to  the  future  popu- 
lation is  not  directly  proportional  to  the  birth  rate.  When  correc- 
tion is  made  for  this  fact,  the  position  of  the  different  social  strata 
is  considerably  modified.  Thus  taking  the  six  groups  of  popu- 
lation in  London,  which  at  the  census  of  1901  numbered 
4,536,541,  we  find  that  the  net  addition  to  the  population  in 
Group  i  by  excess  of  corrected  birth  rate  over  death  rate  is  much 
less  than  the  births  alone  would  indicate,  and  is  less  than  in 
Group  4  (see  Table  E).  Group  6  is  exceptional  and  relatively 

TABLE  E.    GROUPS  OF  METROPOLITAN  BOROUGHS1 


j  ^  a   ,  H 

J      ,     o. 

—   c<5 

t. 

~ 

S  M  £  r°  < 

H    9    O 

£  h 

O    " 

* 

i.    2 

£   o1 

<  <  £  2  „ 

H"O 

,-*  *£ 

f  a 

p 

—    r 

HH        (^ 

^    r~    !X    ;C    n 

0    °    K 

H  ^ 

e  ~_ 

tl            U 

^ 

•-  _> 

UJ 

—    ^ 

2           ;-,  Jr 

-  z  •< 

H    £ 

<  2  w 

5  ~ 

K     ~ 

0 

~  'J 

g^ 

^    2    '*-    r-    H 

|  <  z 

0  — 

K 

^J 

*  u  H  K  u 

^    —    X 

CJ 

^    C    o 

^  "~  "  —   ™ 

fo  SH    a 

Group  i  .         ... 

-I    56 

18.41 

0^04 

19.14 

I  °.J.2 

, 

Group  2  . 

•V--> 

25.82 

M.-17 

'o44" 

I  N  O7 

1  —  •-}-  — 
TO  7  C 

Group  i  . 

2  ^.OQ 

•T  J 

14.56 

0--7 

j-w/ 
I  ^.77 

w  /  j 
IO.26 

4  6 

Group  4  . 

j  J  J 
25.88 

""  ^.  sO 

I''.  07 

0406 

J  J/ 
12.67 

^-.VJ 

8.5 

Group  5  

2  v  17 

-  J'  j^ 

/ 

14.82 

.0466 

o.St; 

7  8 

Group  6  

j      / 
18.24 

•'o'j- 

I  2.QO 

.1213 

M.  ^7 

V      J 

5.88 

/  u 

O  7 

—  i- 

3 

J  J 

J/ 

J'/ 

1  This  method  of  presenting  the  facts  gives  a  statement  in  each  case  of  what 
the  natural  increase  in  the  population  of  England  and  Wales  would  be  if  the  same 
fertility,  marriage,  and  death  rates  prevailed  in  its  population  as  in  that  of  the  group 
in  question.  The  results  are  consequently  comparable,  and  form  the  only  proper 
basis  for  comparing  the  relative  increments  added  to  the  population  by  such  groups 
of  districts.  It  may  possibly  be  urged  that  marriage  being  a  voluntary  transaction, 
due  credit  should  be  given  when  instituting  such  a  comparison  to  the  group  with 
the  higher  marriage  rate  for  the  increased  number  of  births  resulting  from  it.  But 
it  must  be  noted  that  (i)  for  the  female  domestics  of  Kensington  and  Ilampstead 
as  a  class  marriage  is  not  a  matter  of  choice,  and  that  (2)  although  in,  they  are  not 
of  the  distn'ct  they  inhabit,  as  they  come  from  poorer  districts,  whose  relative  birth 


94  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

small.  Whether  its  contribution  to  the  total  result  is  much  smaller 
than  in  the  past  must  still  be  a  matter  of  doubt,  notwithstanding 
the  instances  already  quoted ;  and  meanwhile  it  is  satisfactory  to 
find  that  the  contribution  to  the  population  furnished  by  the 
aggregate  of  the  first  four  groups,  constituting  82.5  per  cent  of 
the  total  population  of  London,  is  not  at  a  much  less  rate  than 
that  furnished  by  the  poorest  group  of  all.  It  is  unfortunate  that, 
owing  to  changes  of  boundaries  of  metropolitan  boroughs,  etc., 
the  facts  for  the  same  groups  could  not  be  ascertained  for  1881. 

5.  THE  NATURAL  INCREASE  OF  POPULATION1 

The  table  on  page  95  gives  for  most  of  the  countries  of  the 
world  for  which  data  are  available  the  average  annual  excess  of 
the  birth  rate  over  the  death  rate,  by  decades.  It  shows,  for  in- 
stance, that  disregarding  immigration  and  emigration  there  were 
in  the  German  Empire,  on  the  average,  in  each  year  from  1901 
to  1910,  14.3  more  births  than  there  were  deaths  in  each  1000 
of  the  total  population.  In  other  words  there  were  1014.3  living 
people  where  there  had  been  1000  the  year  before. 

rate  would  by  their  absence  be  rendered  unduly  high  if  age  and  sex  were  corrected 
for,  just  as  their  presence  would  render  that  of  the  richer  groups  unduly  low.  In  the 
absence  of  any  means  of  ascertaining  what  proportion  of  the  deficiency  in  the 
marriage  rate  of  richer  districts  is  due  to  such  inevitable  avoidance  of  marriage, 
and  what,  if  any,  to  greater  voluntary  avoidance,  the  only  safe  method  appears  to 
be  to  exclude  the  influence  of  variations  in  the  marital  conditions  as  well  as  in  the 
age  and  sex  constitution  of  the  populations  compared.  This  is  done  in  the  "  cor- 
rected natural  increase  "  as  stated  above. 

1  Adapted  from  R.  Jaeckel :  Die  Geburten-,  Heirats-,  Sterbe-,  und  Geburten- 
iiberschuPziffern  in  den  hauptsachlichsten  Kulturstaaten  der  Welt,  1801-1911, 
Jahrbuch  fiir  National-Oekonomie,  Vol.  GUI,  in,  chap,  xlviii,  pp.  86-90.  (July, 
1914.)  Similar  tables  can  be  consulted  in  the  Annual  Reports  of  the  Registrar- 
General  of  England  and  Wales. 


THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE 


95 


1801 

TO 

1810 

1811 

TO 

1820 

1821 

TO 

1830 

1831 

TO 

1840 

1841 

TO 

1850 

1851 

TO 

1860 

1861 

TO 

1870 

1871 

TO 

1880 

1881 

TO 

1890 

1891 

TO 

1900 

1901 

TO 

1910 

German  Empire    . 
Prussia     .... 
Bavaria    .... 
Saxony    .... 
Alsace-Lorraine 
Austria     

13-3 
10.4 

9.2 
5.8 
IO.O 

5-7 

9-3 
10.4 
6.4 
10.9 

7.8 

C.2 

8.9 
IO.I 

5-5 
12.5 

5-3 

6.2 

10.3 

"•3 
7-1 
12.4 
6.6 
80 

11.9 
12.4 

9-5 
13.8 

7-4 
7.1 

11.7 

12.7 

8-5 
I3.8 
6.5 

8  i 

'3-9 
14.8 
II.  I 
15-5 

8.6 

IO.? 

14-3 

IS-I 

12.9 

I3.8 
9.8 
I  I.O 

Hungary  

I  I.C 

10.7 

I  I.I 

France     

c,7 

"5.8 

4.2 

4.1 

2.4 

2.7 

1-7 

1.8 

0.7 

1.2 

England  andWales 
Scotland  

IO.2 

11.9 

12.7 

I2.Q 

14.0 
i^.  ~i 

13-4 
i  T.I 

11.7 

II.Q 

u.8 
1  1.  8 

Ireland     

Q.7 

8.1 

4.8 

C   Q 

Denmark     .... 
Sweden    

7-4 

-2.O 

9-3 
7.6 

9-4 

I  I  O 

7-1 

8.7 

IO.I 
I  I.C 

11.9 
i  i.i 

10.8 

I  1.2 

I2.O 
12.2 

13-4 

12.2 

12.7 

IO.7 

12.0 

10.6 

Norway    

2.1 

8.7 

IA  A 

Q  A 

12  6 

iq.8 

12  Q 

I4.O 

I  3.Q 

I4.O 

I  2  Q 

Finland    

A.  A 

I  I.O 

111 

e  t 

I""  O 

7.2 

2  "* 

14.8 

I1.Q 

12.  C 

112 

Russia  

I  ^.1 

Bulgaria  

1-3.4. 

18  e 

Servia  

I  1  Q 

6.2 

19  8 

IA  7 

ic6 

Roumania    .... 
Greece     

6.9 

3-7 
8.0 

13-9 

11.4 

14.0 

Italy  

7.O 

IO  ? 

10  8 

ill 

Spain    

7.1 

4.C 

c.-i 

0.2 

Portugal  

10  4 

Q.-5 

1  1.  6 

Holland   

68 

7  7 

10  4 

I  I  Q 

I  7    •» 

IA    I 

ICO 

Belgium   

7.6 

6.1 

7.6 

8.1 

q.8 

0.6 

IO.I 

Q.7 

Switzerland     .    .    . 
Australian  Federa- 
tion 

5-3 

7.2 

"M   •? 

7-3 

^O  A 

7-3 

9.1 

169 

10.2 
I  C  1 

New  South  "Wales 
Victoria    

IQ  I 

25.2 
*>A.  A 

23-3 
18.-? 

19.8 
161 

1  8.0 
14  6 

16.3 

12  7 

Queensland    .    .    . 
South  Australia     . 
West  Australia  .    . 
Tasmania     .... 
New  Zealand      .    . 
Chile     

24-5 
27.0 
20.7 
17.1 
27.8 

21.  1 
22.4 
17.0 
14.6 
28.3 

20.3 
22.9 
18.7 
19.4 

23-4 
c  8 

19.2 
17.0 

13-9 
18.0 
16.9 
c  o 

16.2 

14.7 
17.9 
18.4 
17.0 

I.Q 

Uruguay  

*>i  i 

'"O  Q 

''A  I 

Taoan 

8  •* 

08 

lie 

Connecticut    .    .    . 
Massachusetts   .    . 
Michigan     .... 
Vermont  

9-7 
10.9 

6.5 
6-3 

C  1 

8-3 

6.1 

13-7 

6  i 

5-6 
5-9 
12.7 

6-7 
8.4 
9.2 

8.0 

9-3 
6.8 
4.8 

96  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

6.    THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  THE  EFFECTIVE  DESIRE 
FOR  OFFSPRING1 

The  laws  of  population  as  expounded  by  Mai  thus  will  be  found 

|  to  fail.    His_ciro£_arises  from  the  fact  that  he  assimilates  man" to 

the   inferior  animals.    This   was   also  the   practice   ot   the~elder 

Mirabeau,  who  maintained  that  wherever  there  was  subsistence, 

the  human  species  would  multiply  "like  rats  in  a  barn." 

Now  the  nature  of  the  two  is  different ;  and  if  you  assume 
I  that  two  things  of  unlike  nature  obey  the  same  laws,  you  are 
I  guilty  of  a  rashness  that  almost  infallibly  vitiates  your  conclu- 
sions. The  inferior  animals  are  led  by  mere  instinct,  whereas 
man  is  guided  by  reason,  by  fancy,  and  by  that  changeful  thing 
we  call  moral  feeling.  Moreover,  man  and  the  lower  animals  are 
different  physically.  With  the  latter  the  female  admits  the  male 
only  when  she  is  in  a  condition  to  conceive ;  with  man  it  is  other- 
wise. There  are  still  other  important  points  of  difference  under 
this  head  which  you  will  find  set  forth  in  the  Memorabilia,  where 
Socrates  is  enumerating  the  particulars  of  man's  superiority.  But 
the  more  significant  differences  are  not  those  which  are  solely  or 
chiefly  physical ;  but  those  which  are  psychological  and  moral. 
Man  is  the  child  of  art,  phantasy,  and  of  reason  full  of  freaks. 

The  rapid  depopulation  of  these  islands  [Hawaii]  is,  in  itself, 
a  curious  circumstance,  and  highly  interesting  as  connected  with 
the  probable  fate  of  other  rude  nations,  the  mass  of  the  earth,  in 
fact,  if  subjected  to  similar  influences.  It  is,  moreover,  a  phe- 
nomenon which  does  not  square  with  the  Mirabeau-Malthusian 
doctrine.  Subsistence  is  easily  procured  here,  there  being  an 
abundance  of  vacant,  fertile  land,  two  hours  daily  labor  on  which 
would  give  every  man  ample  support  for  a  large  family.  Cattle, 
goats,  and  horses  (the  latter  eaten  by  the  natives  and  preferred 

1  By  John  Rae.  From  The  Sociological  Theory  of  Capital,  edited  by  ('.  W. 
Mixter,  pp.  354-.i5>S.  The  Macmillan  Company,  New  York,  1905.  The  selection  is 
taken  originally  from  a  manuscript  written  by  Rae  in  the  early  sixties  while  he 
was  living  in  the  Hawaiian  Islands,  but  the  last  three  paragraphs  are  from  his 
New  Principles  of  Political  Economy,  Boston,  1X34.  Two  rather  more  elaborate 
versions  of  Rae's  final  position  on  the  subject  of  population  may  be  found  in  the 
Economic  Journal,  March,  1902,  pp.  iii-ico. 


THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE  97 

to  beef),  have  been  added  to  the  resources  of  former  times.  One 
would  expect,  therefore,  on  Malthusian  principles,  an  increase  of 
population  instead  of  this  fearful  diminution. 

Vice  is  put  down  by  Malthus  as  one  of  the  checks  to  popula- 
tion ;  and  here  it  is  true  of  recent  years  that  vice,  in  the  form  of 
drunkenness  and  licentiousness  especially  among  young  females, 
has  greatly  increased.  But  with  Malthus  vice  is  treated  as  specif- 
ically "a  check"  to  the  pressure  of  a  growing  population  upon 
the  means  of  subsistence,  and  arising  out  of  that  pressure.  Here, 
as  has  just  been  observed,  there  is  no  pressure  of  population. 
Those  other  forms  of  vice  and  things  analogous  to  vice,  which 
are  the  positive  checks  of  a  growing  population  in  straightened 
material  circumstances — wars,  epidemics,  human  sacrifice,  infanti- 
cide, inconstant  marriages,  and  intercourse  between  males,  whichl 
last  was  formerly  an  established  institution,  have  all  since  the 
coming  of  the  missionaries  been  greatly  lessened  or  done  away 
with  altogether. 

The  fact  is  that  the  Malthusian  philosophy  of  population 
accounts  for  the  vital  phenomena  of  healthy  societies  only,  not  at 
all  for  that  of  sick  societies,  such  as  the  one  in  these  islands  has 
become  notwithstanding  the  efforts  of  the  missionaries,1  and  such 
as  Rome  was  in  the  days  of  her  decline. 

A  scientific  theory  which  does  not  explain  the  totality  of  the 
phenomena  with  which  it  is  concerned,  is  manifestly  insufficient; 
at  best,  it  may  be  half  right. 

A  truly  philosophical  Essay  on  Population,  fearlessly  embracing 
the  whole  subject,  might  proceed  thus.  Man  is  an  animal  and 
more.  Being  an  animal  he  must  in  each  generation  exercise  his 
powers  of  propagation  to  the  extent  of  somewhat  more  than  repro- 
ducing himself,  else  accidents  would  diminish  and  ultimately  destroy 
the  race.  He  resembles  the  inferior  animals  also  in  this,  that  the 
act  of  propagation  is  attended  with  vehement  pleasure.  But  he 
differs  from  them  in  this,  that  he  knows  the  probable  results  of 
this  act  (which  they  do  not),  and  in  dread  of  these  results  may 
altogether  refrain  or  take  measures  to  negative  them.  He  has 

1  See  the  article  in  the  Economic  Journal  for  the  causes  which  Rae  assigns  for 
this  social  degeneration. 


98  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

in  short  the  capacity  of  diminishing  his  numbers  by  abstinence 
•  which  his  reason,  either  when  on  the  right  road  or  when  a  wan- 
dering, may  teach  him ;  or  by  other  modes  in  which  the  appetite 
is  abundantly  gratified.    For  the  reason  that  man  is  more  than  an 
animal,  therefore,  to  increase,  or  to  merely  preserve,  the  numbers 
i  of  any  society,  it  is  necessary  that  there  exist  an  effective  desire 
*°f  offspring.1 

This  last  in  some  respects  coincides  with  the  effective  desire 
of  accumulation,  since  if  a  man  desire  offspring  he  will  generally 
effectively  desire  the  means  of  supporting  them  (and  advancing 
their  position  in  the  world).  But  it  is,  nevertheless,  regulated  by 
different  principles.  These  are  mainly  certain  sentiments  per- 
vading the  society,  and  which  we  may  term  instincts  of  Society. 
There  is  great  difficulty  in  assigning  a  cause  for  these  instincts, 
much  the  same  as  that  we  experience  in  accounting  for  the  in- 
stincts proper  of  animals.  We  may  rest  on  this  without  going 
farther,  that  in  any  particular  species  of  animal  and  in  any  partic- 
ular society,  they  conduce  to  their  respective  well-being  in  some 
particular  phase  of  their  existence.2 

»       But  though  in  consequence  of  having  been  "  hammered  into 
I  the  race,"  these  social  instincts  respecting  population  are  relatively 
'permanent,  they  may,  nevertheless,  change.    And  thus  it  comes 
about  that  we  tread  on  dangerous  ground  whenever  we  preach 
Malthusianism  to  any  people.    The  peculiar  nature  of  the  human 
mind,  rather  excited  to  action  by  motives,  than  passively  oper- 
ated on   by  them,   and   molding,  therefore,  its  energies  to  suit 
the  course  it  adopts,  occasions  a  difference  between  phenomena 

1  The  reader  may  be  surprised  at  first  sight  that  in  this  summary  Rae  makes 
no  mention  of  man's  need  for  food,  seeing  that  in  so  far  as  he  is  an  animal,  that  is 
a  manifest  requirement.    The  reason  for  the  omission  is  that  Rae  is  dealing  here 
primarily  with  the  specific  principles  of  human  propagation,  not  with  their  com- 
bination with  other  principles  ("  diminishing  returns,"  "  invention,"  and  the  like) 
which  have  to  do  with  wealth-production.    In  otherwords,  throughout  this  Article 
he  is  concerned  with  setting  forth  not  the  complete  doctrine  of  the  actual  multiplica- 
tion of  the  human  species  but  with  the  pure  theory  of  population  itself.  —  C.  W.  M. 

2  Rae  believed  that  the  strenuous  warfare  in  which  for  many  centuries  the 
northern  races  of  Europe  were  engaged,  produced  in  them  strong  "  instincts  of 
society  "  respecting  the  desire  for  offspring  and  the  sanctity  of  marriage,  which 
still  persist  though  threatened  by  modern  conditions. 


THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE  99 

influenced  by  it  and  all  others.  Hence,  according  to  the  preponder- 
ating motive,  and  the  course  of  action  followed,  the  same  powers 
and  principles  take  opposite  directions,  and  the  will  is  able  to 
draw  to  its  purposes  and  make  allies  of  those  which  would  seem 
naturally  opposed  to  it. 

Thus  in  an  intelligent  and  moral  community,  the  vanity  of  the  i 
mother  is  gratified  in  the  well-being  of  the  child,  and  she  prides/ 
herself  in  the  proofs  of  her  having  been  an  affectionate  and  care-j 
ful  parent.    In  a  vain  and  dissipated  community,  on  the  other/ 
hand,  she  would  be  ashamed  of  devoting   her  attention  to  the 
homely  and  unostentatious  cares  to  which  solicitude  for  the  wel- 
fare of  offspring  prompts.    In  the  one  case,  vanity  excited  parental 
affection,  in  the  other  it  stifles  it.    The  movement  of  the  mind, 
in  these  instances,  is  somewhat  analogous  to  that  of  those  bal- 
ances, in  which  the  poise,  if  in  the  least  inclining  to  one  side  or 
the  other,  hurries  it  down  with  a  rapid  and  continually  increasing 
preponderance. 

This  proneness  in  humanity  to  advance  or  recede  with  a  speedj 
accelerated  by  the  subjugation  of  opposing  motives,  helps  to  afford] 
an  explanation  of  what  I  conceive  to  be  one  of  the  main  causes\ 
of  the  decay  of  states. 

[In  the  Article  in  the  Economic  Journal  mentioned  above,  Rae  goes  more/ 
extensively  than  in  this  brief  outline  into  the  nature  and  causes  of  what  hej 
calls  the  "  instincts  of  society  "  touching  matters  of  marriage  and  procreation.y 
He  develops  there  at  some  length  the  idea  that  the  effective  desire  of  offspring 
depends  not  only  upon  individual  psychology  (as  we  ordinarily  set  bounds  to 
that  order  of  facts),  but  also  upon  a  general  hopeful,  optimistic  outlook  on  life 
pervading  the  whole  social  group.    When  a  society  gets  on  the  downward  roadi 
and  its  members  feel  a  sense  of  depression  and  lack  of  self-respect,  men  cease» 
to  breed.    Under  such  circumstances  there  is  no  agreement  between  material 
circumstances  and  the  propagation  of  the  species.    The  effective  desire  of  off^ 
spring  means,  of  course,  not  merely  the  desire  to  bring  children  into  the  world,  \ 
but  the  taking  satisfaction  in  them,  and  the  desire  to  rear  them  to  maturity.  J 
On  these  points,  and  generally  on  the  whole  subject  of  the  theory  of  popula- 
tion, powerful  support  is  afforded  Rae  by  Bagehot  in  his  Economic  Studies. 

In  one  particular  it  seems  to  the  Editor  [C.  W.  M.],  Rae  is  not  altogether 
correct ;  and  that  is  in  the  position  he  takes  here  and  elsewhere  with  respect 
to  the  relation  between  the  principle  of  the  effective  desire  of  offspring  and  the 
principle  of  the  effective  desire  of  accumulation.  They  may  be  often  opposed 


100  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

to  each  other.  In  a  healthful  society,  indeed,  for  general  sociological  reasons, 
both  will  be  strong ;  and  in  a  sick  society,  on  the  other  hand,  both  will  be 
weak.  But  in  a  society  which  is  neither  wholly  well  or  wholly  sick  (as  is  the 
state  of  most  societies)  a  strong  effective  desire  of  accumulation  with  many  in- 
dividuals, or  with  certain  sections  of  the  society,  may  go  along  with  a  weak 
effective  desire  of  offspring,  and  vice  versa.  Rae  seems  to  have  been  led  into 
this  position,  involving  some  degree  of  error,  through  his  disposition  to  over- 
emphasize social  solidarity  for  the  purpose  of  getting  strong  contrasts,  as  wholes, 
between  the  different  communities. 

But  however  this  may  be,  it  is  certain  that  we  cannot  dogmatize  for  all  times 
and  places  and  classes  in  respect  to  population,  in  the  Malthusian  fashion.  And 
it  is  also  clear  that  in  the  principle  of  the  effective  desire  of  offspring  we  have 
the  true  center  of  gravity,  so  to  speak,  of  this  complex  and  difficult  subject — 
the  starting  point  for  fresh  and  more  fruitful  studies.  —  C.  W.  M.] 

7.   THE  LAW  OF  POPULATION  BASED  UPON  THE  OPPOSITION 
BETWEEN   INDIVIDUATION  AND  GENESIS1 

The  forces  preservative  of  race  are  two  —  ability  in  each 
\  member  of  the  race  to  preserve  itself,  and  ability  to  produce 
1  other  members  —  power  to  maintain  individual  life,  and  power  to 
generate  the  species.  These  must  vary  inversely.  When,  from 
lovvness  of  organization,  the  ability  to  contend  with  external  dan- 
gers is  small,  there  must  be  great  fertility  to  compensate  for  the 
consequent  mortality ;  otherwise  the  race  must  die  out.  When, 
on  the  contrary,  high  endowments  give  much  capacity  of  self- 
preservation,  a  correspondingly  low  degree  of  fertility  is  requi- 
site. Given  the  dangers  to  be  met  as  a  constant  quantity  ;  then, 
as  the  ability  of  any  species  to  meet  them  must  be  a  constant 
quantity  too,  and  as  this  is  made  up  of  the  two  factors  —  power 
to  maintain  individual  life  and  power  to  multiply  —  these  can- 
not do  other  than  vary  inversely  :  one  must  decrease  as  the 
other  increases.  .  .  . 

The  opposite  side  of  this  antagonism  has  also  several  aspects. 
Progress  of  organic  evolution  may  be  shown  in  increased  bulk, 
in  increased  structure,  in  increased  amount  or  variety  of  action, 
or  in  combinations  of  these  ;  and  under  any  of  its  forms  this 

1  l?y  Herbert  Spencer.  Condensed  from  Principles  of  Biology,  Vol.  II,  pp.  401, 
406-410,  479-508.  1).  Appleton  &  Company,  New  York,  1867. 


THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE  IOI 

carrying  higher  of  each  individuality,  implies  a  correlative  retar-U 
dation  in  the  establishment  of  new  individualities. 

OjjlP.r  tbinnrc   pqnal     PVfry  aHHitinn    to   fVie  hnlk    pf   an  Organism 

isan_augmentation  of.  its  life^  Besides  being  an  advance  in  inte- 
gration it  implies  a  greater  total  of  activities  gone  through  in  the 
assimilation  of  materials  ;  and  it  implies,  thereafter,  a  greater  total 
of  the  vital  changes  taking  place  from  moment  to  moment  in  all  parts 
of  the  enlarged  mass.  Moreover,  while  increased  size  is  thus,  in 
so  far,  the  expression  of  increased  life  it  is  also,  where  the  organ- 
ism is  active,  the  expression  of  increased  ability  to  maintain  life 

—  increased  strength.    Aggregation  of  substance  is  almost  the  only 
mode  in  which  self-preserving  power  is  shown  among  the  lowest 
types  ;   and  even  among  the  highest,  sustaining  the  body  in  its 
integrity  is  that  in  which  self-preservation  fundamentally  consists 

—  is  the  end  which  the  widest  intelligence  indirectly  is  made  to 
subserve.    While,  on  the  one  hand,  the  increase  of  tissue  consti- 
tuting growth  is  conservative  both  in  essence  and  in  result ;    on 
the  other  hand,  decrease  of  tissue,  either  from  injury,  disease,  or 
old  age,  is  in  both  essence  and  result  the  reverse.    And  if  so,, 
every  addition  to  individual  life  thus  implied,  necessarily  delays  or/I 
diminishes  the  casting  off  of  matter  to  form  new  individuals.       ' 

Other  things  equal,  too,  a  greater  degree  of  organization  in-i 
volves  a  smaller  degree  of  that  disorganization  shown  by  the  sepa-l 
ration  of  reproductive  gemmas  and  germs.  Detachment  of  portion 
or  portions  from  what  was  previously  a  living  whole,  is  a  ceasing 
of  coordination  and  is  therefore  essentially  at  variance  with  that 
establishment  of  greater  coordination  which  is  achieved  by  struc- 
tural development.  In  the  extreme  cases  where  a  living  mass  is 
continually  dividing  and  subdividing,  it  is  manifest  that  there  can- 
not arise  much  physiological  division  of  labor ;  since  progress 
towards  mutual  dependence  of  parts  is  prevented  by  the  parts 
becoming  independent.  Contrariwise,  it  is  equally  clear  that  in 
proportion  as  the  physiological  division  of  labor  is  carried  far,  the 
separative  process  must  be  localized  in  some  comparatively  small 
portion  of  the  organism,  where  it  may  go  on  without  affecting  the 
general  structure  —  must  become  relatively  subordinate.  The  ad- 
vance that  is  shown  by  greater  heterogeneity,  must  be  a  hindrance 


102  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

to  multiplication  in  another  way.  For  organization^ entajfe  cost. 
That  transfer  and  transformation  of  materials  implied  by  differ- 
entiation, can  be  effected  only  by  expenditure  of  force ;  and  this 
supposes  consumption  of  digested  and  absorbed  food,  which 
might  otherwise  have  gone  to  make  new  organisms,  or  the  germs 

,of  them.  Hence,  that  individual  evolution  which  consists  in  pro- 
gressive differentiation,  as  well  as  that  which  consists  in  progres- 
sive integration,  necessarily  diminishes  that  species  of  dissolution, 

'general  or  local,  which  propagation  of  the  race  exhibits. 

I  In  active  organisms  we  have  yet  a  further  opposition  between 
self-maintenance  and  maintenance  of  the  race.  All  motion,  sen- 
sible and  insensible,  generated  by  an  animal  for  the  preservation 
of  its  life  is  motion  liberated  from  decomposed  nutriment  —  nutri- 
ment which  if  not  thus  decomposed,  would  have  been  available 

.  for  reproduction  ;  or  rather  —  might  have  been  replaced  by  nutri- 
ment fitted  for  reproductive  purposes,  absorbed  from  other  kinds 
of  food.  Hence  in  proportion  as  the  activities  increase  —  in  pro- 
portion as,  by  its  varied,  complex,  rapid,  and  vigorous  actions,  an 
animal  gains  power  to  support  itself  and  to  cope  with  surrounding 
dangers,  it  must  lose  power  to  propagate.  If,  of  the  force  which 
the  parent  obtains  from  the  environment,  much  is  consumed  in 
its  own  life,  little  remains  to  be  consumed  in  producing  other 
lives ;  and,  conversely,  if  there  is  a  great  consumption  in  produc- 
ing other  lives,  it  can  only  be  where  comparatively  little  is  re- 
served for  parental  life. 

.i  Hence,  then,  Individuation  and  Genesis  are  necessarily  antag- 
JJJ  onistic.  Grouping  under  the  word  Individuation  all  processes  by 

4 which  individual  life  is  completed  and  maintained  and  enlarging 
the  meaning  of  the  word  Genesis  so  as  to  include  all  processes 
aiding  the  formation  and  perfecting  of  new  individuals  ;  we  see 
that  the  two  are  fundamentally  opposed.  Assuming  other  things 
to  remain  the  same  —  assuming  that  environing  conditions  as  to 
climate,  food,  enemies,  etc.,  continue  constant ;  then,  inevitably, 
every  higher  degree  of  individual  evolution  is  followed  by  a  lower 
degree  of  race-multiplication,  and  vice  versa.  Progress  in  bulk, 
complexity,  or  activity,  involves  retrogress  in  fertility  ;  and  prog- 
ress in  fertility  involves  retrogress  in  bulk,  complexity,  or  activity. 


THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE  103 

.  .  .  We  saw  that  a  species  cannot  be  maintained  unless  the 
power  to  preserve  individual  life  and  the  power  to  propagate  other 
individuals  vary  inversely.  And  here  we  have  seen  that,  irrespec- 
tive of  an  end  to  be  subserved,  these  powers  cannot  do  other  than 
vary  inversely. 

MULTIPLICATION  OF  THE  HUMAN  RACE 

As  a  matter  of  course,  the  inverse  variation  between  Individua- 
tion  and  Genesis  holds  of  man  as  of  all  other  organized  beings. 
His  extremely  low  rate  of  multiplication  we  shall  recognize  as  the| 
necessary  concomitant  of  his  much   higher  evolution.    And  the  * 
causes  of  increase  or  decrease  in  his  fertility,  we  shall  expect  to 
find  in  those  changes  of  bulk,  of  structure,  or  of  expenditure, 
which  we  have  in  all  other  cases  seen  associated  with  such  effects. 

In  the  absence  of  detailed  proof  that  these  parallelisms  exist, 
it  might  suffice  to  contemplate  the  several  communities  between 
the  reproductive  function  in  human  beings  and  other  beings. 
I  do  not  refer  simply  to  the  fact  that  genesis  proceeds  in  a  simi- 
lar manner ;  but  I  refer  to  the  similarity  of  the  relation  between 
the  generative  function  and  the  functions  that  have  for  their  joint 
end  the  preservation  of  the  individual.  In  Man,  as  in  other  crea- 
tures that  expend  much,  genesis  commences  only  when  growth 
and  development  are  declining  in  rapidity  and  approaching  their 
termination.  Among  the  higher  organisms  in  general,  the  repro- 
ductive activity,  continuing  during  the  prime  of  life,  ceases  when 
the  vigor  declines,  leaving  a  closing  period  of  infertility  ;  and  in 
like  manner  among  ourselves,  barrenness  supervenes  when  mid- 
dle age  brings  the  surplus  vitality  to  an  end.  So,  too,  it  is  foundj  * 
that  in  Man,  as  in  beings  of  lower  orders,  there  is  a  period  at! 
which  fecundity  culminates.  At  the  commencement  of  the  repro- 
ductive period,  animals  bear  fewer  offspring  than  afterwards  ;  and 
towards  the  close  of  the  reproductive  period,  there  is  a  decrease 
in  the  number  produced.  In  like  manner,  the  fecundity  of  women 
increases  up  to  the  age  of  about  twenty-five  years  ;  and  continuing 
high  with  but  slight  diminution  till  after  thirty,  then  gradually 
wanes.  Once  more,  there  is  the  fact  that  a  too  early  bearing  of 


104-  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

young  produces  on  a  woman  the  same  injurious  effects  as  on  an 
inferior  creature  —  an  arrest  of  growth  and  an  enfeeblement  of 
constitution. 

Considering  these  general  and  special  parallelisms,  we  might 
ifely  infer  that  variations  of  human  fertility  conform  to  the  same 
laws  as  do  variations  of  fertility  in  general.  But  it  is  not  needful 
I  to  content  ourselves  with  an  implication.  Evidence  is  assignable 
that  what  causes  increase  or  decrease  of  genesis  in  other  crea- 
tures, causes  increase  or  decrease  of  genesis  in  Man.  It  is  true 
that,  even  more  than  hitherto,  our  reasonings  are  beset  by  diffi- 
culties. So  numerous  are  the  inequalities  in  the  conditions,  that 
but  few  unobjectionable  comparisons  can  be  made.  The  human 
races  differ  considerably  in  their  sizes,  and  notably  in  their  degrees 
of  cerebral  development.  The  climates  they  inhabit  entail  on  them 
widely  different  consumptions  of  matter  for  maintenance  of  tem- 
perature. Both  in  their  qualities  and  quantities,  the  foods  they 
live  on  are  unlike  ;  and  the  supply  is  here  regular  and  there  very 
irregular.  Their  expenditures  in  bodily  action  are  extremely  un- 
equal ;  and  even  still  more  unequal  are  their  expenditures  in  men- 
tal action.  Hence  the  factors,  varying  so  much  in  their  amounts 
and  combinations,  can  scarcely  ever  have  their  respective  effects 
identified.  Nevertheless  there  are  a  few  comparisons,  the  results 
of  which  may  withstand  criticism. 

The  increase  of  fertility  caused  by  a  nutrition  that  is  greatly  in 
excess  of  the  expenditure,  is  to  be  detected  by  contrasting  popu- 
lations of  the  same  race,  or  allied  races,  one  of  which  obtains 
good  and  abundant  sustenance  much  more  easily  than  the  other. 
Three  cases  may  be  set  down.  [Two  are  here  omitted-  — the 
Boors  and  the  Kaffirs.]  An  instance  is  that  of  the  French 
Canadians.  "  Xons  sommcs  tcrriblcs  pour  Ics  cnfants"  observed 
one  of  them  to  Professor  Johnston  ;  who  tells  us  that  the  man 
who  said  this  "was  one  of  fourteen  children  —  was  himself  the 
father  of  fourteen  and  assured  me  that  from  eight  to  sixteen  was 
the  usual  number  of  the  farmers'  families.  lie  even  named  one 
or  two  women  who  had  brought  their  husbands  five-and-twenty, 
and  threatened  '  Ic  I'itigt-sixicmc  pour  Ic  p  ret  re. '  '  From  these 
large  families,  joined  with  the  early  marriages  and  low  rate  of 


THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE  105 

mortality,  it  results  that,  by  natural  increase,  "there  are  added  to 
the  French-Canadian  population  of  Lower  Canada  four  persons 
for  every  one  that  is  added  to  the  population  of  England."  Now 
these  French  Canadians  are  described  by  Professor  Johnston  as 
home-loving,  contented,  unenterprising ;  and  as  living  in  a  region 
where  "  land  and  subsistence  are  easily  obtained."  Very  moderate  \ 
industry  brings  to  them  liberal  supplies  of  necessaries  ;  and  they  J 
pass  a  considerable  portion  of  the  year  in  idleness.  Hence  the* 
cost  of  Individuation  being  much  reduced,  the  rate  of  Genesis  is 
much  increased.  That  this  uncommon  fertility  is  not  due  to  any' 
direct  influence  of  the  locality,  is  implied  by  the  fact  that  along 
with  the  "  restless,  discontented,  striving,  burning  energy  of  their 
Saxon  neighbors  "  no  such  rate  of  multiplication  is  observed  ;  while 
further  south,  where  the  physical  circumstances  are  more  favorable 
if  anything,  the  Anglo-Saxons,  leading  lives  of  excessive  activity, 
have  a  fertility  below  the  average.  And  that  the  peculiarity  is  not 
a  direct  effect  of  race,  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  in  Europe,  the 
rural  French  are  certainly  not  more  prolific  than  the  rural  English. 
We  conclude,  then,  that  in  the  human  race,  as  in  all  other 
races,  such  absolute  or  relative  abundance  of  nutriment  as  leaves 
a  large  excess  after  defraying  the  cost  of  carrying  on  parental 
life,  is  accompanied  by  a  high  rate  of  genesis.1 


that  1 1 

17 

and  ' 


1  This  is  exactly  the  reverse  of  Mr.  Doubleday's  doctrine ;  which  is  that 
throughout  both  the  animal  and  vegetal  kingdoms,  "  overfeeding  checks 
crease ;  whilst,  on  the  other  hand,  a  limited  or  deficient  nutriment  stimulates 
adds  to  it."  Or,  as  he  elsewhere  says  —  "  Be  the  range  of  natural  power  to  in- 
crease in  any  species  what  it  may,  the  plethoric  state  invariably  checks  it,  and  the 
deplethoric  state  invariably  develops  it ;  and  this  happens  in  the  exact  ratio  of 
the  intensity  and  completeness  of  each  state,  until  each  state  be  carried  so  far  as 
to  bring  about  the  actual  death  of  the  animal  or  plant  itself." 

I  have  space  here  only  to  indicate  the  misinterpretations  on  which  Mr.  Double- 
day  has  based  his  argument. 

In  the  first  place,  he  has  confounded  normal  plethora  with  what  I  have,  in 
§  355,  distinguished  as  abnormal  plethora.  The  cases  of  infertility  accompanying 
fatness,  which  he  cites  in  proof  that  overfeeding  checks  increase,  are  not  cases 
of  high  nutrition  properly  so  called  ;  but  cases  of  such  defective  absorption  or 
assimilation  as  constitutes  low  nutrition.  In  Chapter  IX,  abundant  proof  was 
given  that  a  truly  plethoric  state  is  an  unusually  fertile  state.  It  may  be  added 
that  much  of  the  evidence  by  which  Mr.  Doubleday  seeks  to  show  that  among 
men,  highly  fed  classes  are  infertile  classes,  may  be  outbalanced  by  counter- 
evidence.  Many  years  ago  Mr.  Lewes  pointed  this  out :  extracting  from  a  book 


io6  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

,  i       Evidence  of  the  converse  truth,  that  relative  increase  of  ex- 
\\penditure,  leaving  a  diminished  surplus,  reduces  the  degree  of 
Q  fertility,  is  not  wanting. 

To  prove  that  much  bodily  labor  renders  women  less  prolific, 
\  requires  more  evidence  than  is  obtainable.  Some  evidence,  how- 
ever, may  be  set  down.  De  Boismont  in  France  and  Dr.  Szukits 
in  Austria,  have  shown  by  extensive  statistical  comparisons,  that 
the  reproductive  age  is  reached  a  year  later  by  women  of  the 
laboring  class  than  by  middle-class  women  ;  and  while  ascribing 
this  delay  in  part  to  inferior  nutrition,  we  may  suspect  that  it  is 
in  part  due  to  greater  muscular  expenditure.  A  kindred  fact, 

on  the  peerage,  the  names  of  16  peers  who  had,  at  that  time,  186  children  ;  giving 
an  average  of  1 1 .6  in  a  family. 

Mr.  Doubleday  insists  much  on  the  support  given  to  his  theory  by  the  barren- 
ness of  very  luxuriant  plants,  and  the  fruitfulness  produced  in  plants  by  depletion. 
Had  he  been  aware  that  the  change  from  barrenness  to  fruitfulness  in  plants,  is  a 
change  from  agamogenesis  to  gamogenesis  —  had  it  been  as  well  known  at  the 
time  when  he  wrote  as  it  is  now,  that  a  tree  which  goes  on  putting  out  sexless 
shoots,  is  so  producing  new  individuals ;  and  that  when  it  begins  to  bear  fruit,  it 
simply  begins  to  produce  new  individuals  after  another  manner — he  would  have 
perceived  that  facts  of  this  class  do  not  tell  in  his  favor. 

In  the  law  which  Mr.  Doubleday  alleges,  he  sees  a  guarantee  for  the  mainte- 
nance of  species.  He  argues  that  the  plethoric  state  of  the  individuals  constituting 
any  race  of  organisms,  presupposes  conditions  so  favorable  to  life  that  the  race 
can  be  in  no  danger;  and  that  rapidity  of  multiplication  becomes  needless.  Con- 
versely, he  argues  that  a  deplethoric  state  implies  unfavorable  conditions  —  im- 
plies consequently,  unusual  mortality  ;  that  is  —  implies  a  necessity  for  increased 
fertility  to  prevent  the  race  from  dying  out.  It  may  be  readily  shown,  however, 
that  such  an  arrangement  would  be  the  reverse  of  self-adjusting.  Suppose  a  spe- 
cies, too  numerous  for  its  food,  to  be  in  the  resulting  deplethoric  state.  It  will, 
according  to  Mr.  Doubleday,  become  unusually  fertile,  and  the  next  generation 
will  be  more  numerous  rather  than  less  numerous.  For,  by  the  hypothesis,  the 
unusual  fertility  due  to  the  deplethoric  state,  is  the  cause  of  undue  increase  of 
population.  But  if  the  next  generation  is  more  numerous  while  the  supply  of  food 
has  remained  the  same,  or  rather  has  decreased  under  the  keener  competition  for 
it,  then  this  next  generation  will  be  in  a  still  more  deplethoric  state,  and  will  be 
still  more  fertile.  Thus  there  will  go  on  an  ever-increasing  rate  of  multiplication, 
and  an  ever-decreasing  supply  of  food,  until  the  species  disappears.  Suppose,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  members  of  a  species  to  be  in  an  unusually  plethoric  state. 
Their  rate  of  multiplication,  ordinarily  sufficient  to  maintain  their  numbers,  will 
become  insufficient  to  maintain  their  numbers.  In  the  next  generation,  therefore, 
there  will  be  fewer  to  eat  the  already  abundant  food,  which,  becoming  relatively 
still  more  abundant,  will  render  the  fewer  numbers  of  the  species  still  more  ple- 
thoric, and  still  less  fertile,  than  their  parents.  And  the  actions  and  reactions  con- 
tinuing, the  species  will  presently  die  out  from  absolute  barrenness. 


THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE  107 

admitting  of  a  kindred  interpretation,  may  be  added.  Though  the 
comparatively  low  rate  of  increase  in  France  is  attributed  to  other 
causes,  yet,  very  possibly,  one  of  its  causes  is  the  greater  propor- 
tion of  hard  work  entailed  on  French  women,  by  the  excessive 
abstraction  of  men  for  nonproductive  occupations,  military  and 
civil.  The  higher  rate  of  multiplication  in  England  than  in  conti- 
nental countries  generally,  is  not  improbably  furthered  by  the 
easier  lives  which  English  women  lead. 

That  absolute  or  relative   infertility  is  generally  produced  inj  I 
women  by  mental  labor  carried  to  excess,  is  more  clearly  shown 1 1 
Though  the  regimen  of  upper-class  girls  is  not  what  it  should  be, 
yet,  considering  that  their  feeding  is  better  than  that  of  girls 
belonging  to  the  poorer  classes,  while   in  most  other  respects, 
their  physical  treatment  is  not  worse,  the  deficiency  of  reproduc- 
tive power  among  them  may  be  reasonably  attributed  to  the  over- 
taxing of  their  brains  —  an  overtaxing  which  produces  a  serious 
reaction  on  the  physique.    This  diminution  of  reproductive  power 
is  not  shown  only  by  the  greater  frequency  of  absolute  sterility ; 
nor  is  it  shown  only  in  the  earlier  cessation  of  childbearing ;  but 
it  is  also  shown  in  the  very  frequent  inability  of  such  women  to 
suckle  their  infants.     In  its   full   sense,  the  reproductive  power! 
means  the  power  to  bear  a  well-developed  infant,  and  to  supply/ 
that  infant  with  the  natural  food  for  the  natural  period.    Most  of 
the  flat-chested  girls  who  survive  their  high-pressure  education, 
are  incompetent  to  do  this.    Were  their  fertility  measured  by  the 
number  of  children   they  could  rear  without  artificial  aid,  they 
would  prove  relatively  very  infertile. 

An  illustration  will  best  clear  up  any  perplexity  as  to  the  con- 
ditions which  govern  the  relation  between  individuation  and 
genesis.  Let  us  say  that  the  fuel  burnt  in  the  furnace  of  a  loco- 
motive steam  engine,  answers  to  the  food  which  a  man  consumes  ; 
let  us  say  that  the  produced  steam  expended  in  working  the  en- 
gine, corresponds  to  that  portion  of  absorbed  nutriment  which 
carries  on  the  man's  functions  and  activities  ;  and  let  us  say  that 
the  steam  blowing  off  at  the  safety  valve,  answers  to  that  portion 
of  the  absorbed  nutriment  which  goes  to  the  propagation  of  the 
race.  Such  being  the  conditions  of  the  case,  several  kinds  of 


108  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

t  variations  are  possible.  All  other  circumstances  remaining  the 
\  same,  there  may  be  changes  of  proportion  between  the  steam 
I  used  for  working  the  engine  and  the  steam  that  escapes  by  the 
safety  valve.  There  may  be  a  structural  or  organic  change  of 
proportion.  By  enlarging  the  safety  valve  or  weakening  its  spring, 
while  the  cylinders  are  reduced  in  size,  there  may  be  established 
a  constitutionally  small  power  of  locomotion  and  a  constitutionally 
large  amount  of  escape-steam  ;  and  inverse  variations  so  produced, 
will  answer  to  the  inverse  variations  between  Individuation  and 
Genesis  which  different  types  of  organisms  show  us.  Again,  there 
may  be  a  functional  change  of  proportion.  If  the  engine  has  to 
draw  a  considerable  load,  the  abstraction  of  steam  by  the  cylinders 
greatly  reduces  the  discharge  by  the  safety  valve  ;  and  if  a  high 
velocity  is  kept  up,  the  discharge  from  the  safety  valve  entirely 
ceases.  Conversely,  if  the  velocity  is  low,  the  escape-steam  bears 
a  large  ratio  to  the  steam  consumed  by  the  motor  apparatus  ;  and 
if  the  engine  becomes  stationary  the  whole  of  the  steam  escapes 
by  the  safety  valve.  This  inverse  variation  answers  to  that  which 
we  have  traced  between  Expenditure  and  Genesis,  as  displayed 
in  the  contrasts  between  species  of  the  same  type  but  unlike 
activities,  and  in  the  contrasts  between  active  and  inactive  individ- 
uals of  the  same  species.  But  now  beyond  these  inverse  variations 
between  the  quantities  of  consumed  steam  and  escape-steam  that 
are  structurally  and  functionally  caused,  there  are  coincident  vari- 
ations producible  in  both  by  changes  in  the  quantity  of  steam 
supplied  —  changes  that  may  be  caused  in  several  ways.  In  the 
first  place,  the  fuel  thrown  into  the  furnace  may  be  increased  or 
made  better.  Other  things  equal,  there  will  result  a  more 
active  locomotion  as  well  as  a  greater  escape ;  and  this  will  an- 
swer to  that  simultaneous  addition  to  its  individual  vigor  and  its 
reproductive  activity,  caused  in  an  animal  by  a  larger  quantity,  or 
a  superior  quality,  of  food.  In  the  second  place,  the  steam  gener- 
ated may  be  economized.  Loss  by  radiation  from  the  boiler  may 
be  lessened  by  a  covering  of  nonconducting  substances  ;  and  part 
of  the  steam  thus  prevented  from  condensing,  will  go  to  increase 
the  working  power  of  the  engine,  while  part  will  be  added  to 
the  quantity  blowing  off.  This  variation  corresponds  to  that 


THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE  109 

simultaneous  addition  to  bodily  vigor  and  propagative  power,  which 
results  in  animals  that  have  to  expend  less  in  keeping  up  their 
temperatures.  In  the  third  place,  by  improvement  of  the  steam- 
generating  apparatus,  more  steam  may  be  obtained  from  a  given 
weight  of  fuel.  A  better-formed  evaporating  surface,  or  boiler 
plates  which  conduct  more  rapidly,  or  an  increased  number  of  tubes, 
may  cause  a  larger  absorption  of  heat  from  the  burning  mass  or 
the  hot  gases  it  gives  off ;  and  the  extra  steam  generated  by  this 
extra  heat,  will,  as  before,  augment  both  the  motive  force  and  the 
emission  through  the  safety  valve.  And  this  last  case  of  coinci- 
dent variation,  is  parallel  to  the  case  with  which  we  are  here 
concerned  —  the  augmentation  of  individual  expenditure  and  of 
reproductive  energy,  that  may  be  caused  by  a  superiority  of  some 
organ  on  which  the  utilizing  or  economizing  of  materials  depends. 

Manifestly,  therefore,  an  increased  expenditure  for  Genesis,  or 
an  increased  expenditure  for  Individuation,  may  arise  in  one  of 
two  quite  different  ways  —  either  by  diminution  of  the  antagonistic 
expenditure,  or  by  addition  to  the  store  which  supplies  both  ex- 
penditure ;  and  confusion  results  from  not  distinguishing  between 
these. 

There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  laws  of  multiplication 
which  hold  of  other  beings,  do  not  hold  of  the  human  being. 
On  the  contrary,  there  are  special  facts  which  unite  with  general 
implications,  to  show  that  these  laws  do  hold  of  the  human  being. 
The  absence  of  direct  evidence  in  some  cases  where  it  might  be 
looked  for,  we  find  fully  explained  when  all  the  factors  are  taken 
into  account.  And  certain  seemingly  adverse  facts,  prove,  on  ex- 
amination, to  be  facts  belonging  to  a  different  category  from  that 
in  which  they  are  placed,  and  harmonize  with  the  rest  when 
rightly  interpreted. 

The  conformity  of  human  fertility  to  the  laws  of  multiplication 
in  general,  being  granted,  it  remains  to  inquire  what  effects  must 
be  caused  by  permanent  changes  in  men's  natures  and  circum- 
stances. Thus  far  we  have  observed  how,  by  their  extremely  high 
evolution  and  extremely  low  fertility,  mankind  display  the  inverse 
variation  between  Individuation  and  Genesis,  in  one  of  its  ex- 
tremes. And  we  have  also  observed  how  mankind,  like  other  [ 


no  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

kinds,  are  functionally  changed  in  their  rates  of  multiplication  by 
changes  of  conditions.  But  we  have  not  observed  how  alteration 
of  structure  in  Man  entails  alteration  of  fertility.  The  influence 
of  this  factor  is  so  entangled  with  the  influences  of  other  facts 
which  are  for  the  present  more  important,  that  we  cannot  recog- 
nize it.  Here,  if  we  proceed  at  all,  we  must  proceed  deductively. 

HUMAN  POPULATION  IN  THE  FUTURE 

I  No  more  in  the  case  of  Man  than  in  the  case  of  any  other 
being,  can  we  presume  that  evolution  either  has  taken  place,  or 
will  hereafter  take  place  spontaneously.  In  the  past,  at  present, 
and  in  the  future,  all  modifications,  functional  and  organic,  have 
been,  are,  and  must  be  immediately  or  remotely  consequent  on 
surrounding  conditions.  What,  then,  are  those  changes  in  the 
environment  to  which,  by  direct  or  indirect  equilibration,  the  hu- 
man organism  has  been  adjusting  itself,  is  adjusting  itself  now, 
and  will  continue  to  adjust  itself  ?  And  how  do  they  necessitate 
a  higher  evolution  of  the  organism  ? 

Civilization,  everywhere  having  for  its  antecedent  the  increase 
[of  population,  and  everywhere  having  for  one  of  its  consequences 
'  a  decrease  of  certain  race-destroying  forces,  has  for  a  further  con- 
sequence an  increase  of  certain  other  race-destroying  forces. 
Danger  of  death  from  predatory  animals  lessens  as  men  grow 
more  numerous.  Though,  as  they  spread  over  the  Earth  and 
divide  into  tribes,  men  become  wild  beasts  to  one  another,  yet 
the  danger  of  death  from  this  cause  also  diminishes  as  tribes 
coalesce  into  nations.  But  the  danger  of  death  which  does  not 
diminish,  is  that  produced  by  augmentation  of  numbers  itself - 
the  danger  from  deficiency  of  food.  Supposing  human  nature  to 
remain  unchanged,  the  mortality  hence  resulting  would,  on  the 
average,  rise  as  human  beings  multiplied.  If  mortality,  under 
such  conditions,  does  not  rise,  it  must  be  because  the  supply  of 
food  also  augments  ;  and  this  implies  some  change  in  human 
habits  wrought  by  the  stress  of  human  needs.  Here,  then,  is  the 
permanent  cause  of  modification  to  which  civilized  men  are  ex- 
posed. Though  the  intensity  of  its  action  is  ever  being  mitigated 


THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE  in 

in  one  direction,  by  greater  production  of  food ;  it  is,  in  the  other 
direction,  ever  being  added  to  by  the  greater  production  of  indi- 
viduals. Manifestly,  the  wants  of  their  redundant  numbers  consti- 
tute the  only  stimulus  mankind  have  to  obtain  more  necessaries 
of  life  :  were  not  the  demand  beyond  the  supply,  there  would  be 
no  motive  to  increase  the  supply.  And  manifestly,  this  excess  of 
demand  over  supply  is  perennial :  this  pressure  of  population, 
of  which  it  is  the  index,  cannot  be  eluded.  Though  by  the  emi- 
gration that  takes  place  when  the  pressure  arrives  at  a  certain 
intensity,  temporary  relief  is  from  time  to  time  obtained  ;  yet,  as 
by  this  process,  all  habitable  countries  must  become  peopled, 
it  follows  that  in  the  end,  the  pressure,  whatever  it  may  then  be, 
must  be  borne  in  full. 

This  constant  increase  of  people  beyond  the  means  of  sub- 
sistence, causes,  then,  a  never-ceasing  requirement  for  skill,  intel- 
ligence, and  self-control  —  involves,  therefore,  a  constant  exercise  j 
of  these  and  gradual  growth  of  them.  Every  industrial  improve-/ 
ment  is  at  once  the  product  of  a  higher  form  of  humanity,  and  i| 
demands  that  higher  form  of  humanity  to  carry  it  into  practice. 
The  application  of  science  to  the  arts,  is  the  bringing  to  bear 
greater  intelligence  for  satisfying  our  wants  ;  and  implies  contin- 
ued progress  of  that  intelligence.  To  get  more  produce  from  the 
acre,  the  farmer  must  study  chemistry,  must  adopt  new  mechan- 
ical appliances,  and  must,  by  the  multiplication  of  processes, 
cultivate  both  his  own  powers  and  the  powers  of  his  laborers. 
To  meet  the  requirements  of  the  market,  the  manufacturer  is 
perpetually  improving  his  old  machines,  and  inventing  new  ones  ; 
and  by  the  premium  of  high  wages  incites  artisans  to  acquire 
greater  skill.  The  daily  widening  ramifications  of  commerce  en- 
tail on  the  merchant  a  need  for  more  knowledge  and  more  com- 
plex calculations ;  while  the  lessening  profits  of  the  shipowner 
force  him  to  build  more  scientifically,  to  get  captains  of  higher 
intelligence,  and  better  crews.  In  all  cases,  pressure  of  population 
is  the  original  cause.  Were  it  not  for  the  competition  this  entails, 
more  thought  and  energy  would  not  daily  be  spent  on  the  busi- 
ness of  life  ;  and  growth  of  mental  power  would  not  take  place. 
Difficulty  in  getting  a  living  is  alike  the  incentive  to  a  higher 


112  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

education  of  children,  and  to  a  more  intense  and  long-continued 
application  in  adults.    In  the  mother  it  induces  foresight,  econ- 
omy, and  skillful  housekeeping ;  in  the  father,  laborious  days  and 
constant  self-denial.    Nothing  but  necessity  could  make  men  sub- 
I  mit  to  this  discipline ;  and  nothing  but  this  discipline  could  pro- 
I  duce  a  continued  progression. 

In  this  case,  as  in  many  others,  Nature  secures  each  step  in 
advance  by  a  succession  of  trials  ;  which  are  perpetually  repeated, 
and  cannot  fail  to  be  repeated,  until  success  is  achieved.  All 
mankind  in  turn  subject  themselves  more  or  less  to  the  discipline 
described  ;  they  either  may  or  may  not  advance  under  it ;  but  in 
the  nature  of  things,  only  those  who  do  advance  under  it  even- 
tually survive.  For,  necessarily,  families  and  races  whom  this 
increasing  difficulty  of  getting  a  living  which  excess  of  fertility 
entails,  does  not  stimulate  to  improvements  in  production  —  that 
is,  to  greater  mental  activity  —  are  on  the  high  road  to  extinction  ; 
and  must  ultimately  be  supplanted  by  those  whom  the  pressure 
does  so  stimulate.  This  truth  we  have  recently  seen  exemplified 
in  Ireland.  And  here,  indeed,  without  further  illustration,  it  will 
be  seen  that  premature  death,  under  all  its  forms  and  from  all  its 
causes,  cannot  fail  to  work  in  the  same  direction.  For  as  those 
prematurely  carried  off  must,  in  the  average  of  cases,  be  those 
in  whom  the  power  of  self-preservation  is  the  least,  it  unavoidably 
follows  that  those  left  behind  to  continue  the  race,  must  be  those 
in  whom  the  power  of  self-preservation  is  the  greatest  —  must  be 
the  select  of  their  generation.  So  that,  whether  the  dangers  to 
existence  be  of  the  kind  produced  by  excess  of  fertility,  or  of 
any  other  kind,  it  is  clear  that  by  the  ceaseless  exercise  of  the 
faculties  needed  to  contend  with  them  successfully,  there  is  in- 
sured a  constant  progress  towards  a  higher  degree  of  skill,  intel- 
ligence, and  self-regulation  —  a  greater  coordination  of  actions  — 
a  more  complete  life. 

The  proposition  at  which  we  have  thus  arrived,  is  then,  that  ex- 
(cess  of  fertility,  through  the  changes  it  is  ever  working  in  Man's 
environment,  is  itself  the  cause  of  Man's  further  evolution  ;  and 
the  obvious  corollary  here  to  be  drawn,  is  that  Man's  further  evolu- 
tion so  brought  about,  itself  necessitates  a  decline  in  his  fertility. 


THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE  113 

That  future  progress  of  civilization  which  the  never-ceasing 
pressure  of  population  must  produce,  will  be  accompanied  by  an/ 
enhanced  cost  of  Individuation,  both  in  structure  and  function  Jj 
and  more  especially  in  nervous  structure  and  function.  The^ 
peaceful  struggle  for  existence  in  societies  ever  growing  more 
crowded  and  more  complicated,  must  have  for  its  concomitant  an 
increase  of  the  great  nervous  centers  in  mass,  in  complexity,  in 
activity.  The  larger  body  of  emotion  needed  as  a  fountain  of 
energy  for  men  who  have  to  hold  their  places  and  rear  their 
families  under  the  intensifying  competition  of  social  life,  is,  other 
things  equal,  the  correlative  of  larger  brain.  Those  higher  feel- 
ings presupposed  by  the  better  self-regulation  which,  in  a  better 
society,  can  alone  enable  the  individual  to  leave  a  persistent  pos- 
terity, are,  other  things  equal,  the  correlatives  of  a  more  complex 
brain  ;  as  are  also  those  more  numerous,  more  varied,  more  gen- 
eral, and  more  abstract  ideas,  which  must  also  become  increasingly 
requisite  for  successful  life  as  society  advances.  And  the  genesis 
of  this  larger  quantity  of  feeling  and  thought,  in  a  brain  thus 
augmented  in  size  and  developed  in  structure,  is,  other  things 
equal,  the  correlative  of  a  greater  wear  of  nervous  tissue  and 
greater  consumption  of  materials  to  repair  it.  So  that  both  in 
original  cost  of  construction  and  in  consequent  cost  of  working, 
the  nervous  system  must  become  a  heavier  tax  on  the  organism. 
Already  the  brain  of  the  civilized  man  is  larger  by  nearly  thirty 
per  cent  than  the  brain  of  the  savage.  Already,  too,  it  presents 
an  increased  heterogeneity — -especially  in  the  distribution  of  its 
convolutions.  And  further  changes  like  these  which  have  taken 
place  under  the  discipline  of  civilized  life,  we  infer  will  continue 
to  take  place.  But  everywhere  and  always,  evolution  is  antago-t 
nistic  to  procreative  dissolution.  Whether  it  be  in  greater  growth 
of  the  organs  which  subserve  self-maintenance,  whether  it  be  in 
their  added  complexity  of  structure,  or  whether  it  be  in  their 
higher  activity,  the  abstraction  of  the  required  materials,  implies 
a  diminished  reserve  of  materials  for  race-maintenance.  And  we 
have  seen  reason  to  believe,  that  this  antagonism  between  Indi- 
viduation and  Genesis,  becomes  unusually  marked  where  the  ner- 
vous system  is  concerned,  because  of  the  costliness  of  nervous 


114  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

structure  and  function.  The  apparent  connection  between  high 
cerebral  development  and  prolonged  delay  of  sexual  maturity  has 
been  pointed  out ;  and  the  evidence  went  to  show  that  where  excep- 
tional fertility  exists  there  is  sluggishness  of  mind,  and  that  where 
there  has  been  during  education  excessive  expenditure  in  mental 
action,  there  frequently  follows  a  complete  or  partial  infertility. 
Hence  the  particular  kind  of  further  evolution  which  Man  is  here- 
after to  undergo,  is  one  which,  more  than  any  other,  may  be 
expected  to  cause  a  decline  in  his  powers  of  reproduction. 

The  higher  nervous  development  and  greater  expenditure  in 
nervous  action,  here  described  as  indirectly  brought  about  by  in- 
crease of  numbers,  must  not  be  taken  to  imply  an  intenser  strain 
—  a  mentally  laborious  life.  The  greater  emotional  and  intellec- 
tual power  and  activity  above  contemplated,  must  be  understood 
as  becoming,  by  small  increments,  organic,  spontaneous  and 
pleasurable.  As,  even  when  relieved  from  the  pressure  of  neces- 
sity, large-brained  Europeans  voluntarily  enter  on  enterprises  and 
activities  which  the  savage  could  not  keep  up  even  to  satisfy 
urgent  wants ;  so,  their  still  larger-brained  descendants  will,  in  a 
still  higher  degree,  find  their  gratifications  in  careers  entailing 
still  greater  mental  expenditures.  This  enhanced  demand  for 
materials  to  establish  and  carry  on  the  psychical  functions  will  be 
a  constitutional  demand.  We  must  conceive  the  type  gradually 
so  modified,  that  the  more  developed  nervous  system  irresistibly 
draws  off,  for  its  normal  and  unforced  activities,  a  larger  propor- 
tion of  the  common  stock  of  nutriment ;  and  while  so  increasing 
the  intensity,  completeness,  and  length  of  the  individual  life, 
necessarily  diminishing  the  reserve  applicable  to  the  setting  up  of 
new  lives  —  no  longer  required  to  be  so  numerous. 

Though  the  working  of  this  process  will  doubtless  be  interfered 
with  and  modified  in  the  future,  as  it  has  been  in  the  past,  by 
the  facilitation  of  living  which  civilization  brings  ;  yet  nothing  be- 
yond temporary  interruptions  can  so  be  caused.  However  much 
the  industrial  arts  may  be  improved,  there  must  be  a  limit  to  the 
improvement ;  while,  with  a  rate  of  multiplication  in  excess  of 
the  rate  of  mortality,  population  must  continually  tread  on  the 
heels  of  production.  So  that  though,  during  the  earlier  stages  of 


THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE  115 

civilization,  an  increased  amount  of  food  may  accrue  from  a  given 
amount  of  labor ;  there  must  come  a  time  when  this  relation  will 
be  reversed,  and  when  every  additional  increment  of  food  will  be 
obtained  by  a  more  than  proportionate  labor :  the  disproportion 
growing  ever  higher,  and  the  diminution  of  the  reproductive  power 
becoming  greater. 

There  now  remains  but  to  inquire  towards  what  limit  this  prog- 
ress tends.  So  long  as  the  fertility  of  the  race  is  more  than 
sufficient  to  balance  the  diminution  by  deaths,  population  must 
continue  to  increase.  So  long  as  population  continues  to  increase, 
there  must  be  pressure  on  the  means  of  subsistence.  And  so  long 
as  there  is  pressure  on  the  means  of  subsistence,  further  mental 
development  must  go  on,  and  further  diminution  of  fertility  must 
result.  Thus,  the  change  can  never  cease  until  the  rate  of  mul- 
tiplication  is  just  equal  to  the  rate  of  mortality  ;  that  is,  can  never  * 
cease  until,  on  the  average,  each  pair  has  as  many  children  as 
are  requisite  to  produce  another  generation  of  childbearing  adults  y 
equal  in  number  to  the  last  generation.  At  first  sight,  this  would 
seem  to  imply  that  eventually  each  pair  will  rarely  have  more 
than  two  offspring  ;  but  a  little  consideration  shows  that  this  is  a 
lower  degree  of  fertility  than  is  likely  ever  to  be  reached. 

Supposing  the  Sun's  light  and  heat,  on  which  all  terrestrial  life 
depends,  to  continue  abundant,  for  a  period  long  enough  to  allow 
the  entire  evolution  we  are  contemplating ;  there  are  still  certain 
slow  astronomic  and  geologic  changes  which  must  prevent  such 
complete  adjustment  of  human  nature  to  surrounding  conditions, 
as  would  permit  the  rate  of  multiplication  to  fall  so  low.  As  be- 
fore pointed  out,1  during  an  epoch  of  twenty-one  thousand  years,  each 
hemisphere  goes  through  a  cycle  of  temperate  seasons  and  seasons 
extreme  in  their  heat  and  cold  —  variations  that  are  themselves 
alternately  exaggerated  and  mitigated  in  the  course  of  far  longer 
cycles  ;  and  we  saw  that  these  caused  perpetual  ebbings  and  flow- 
ings  of  species  over  different  parts  of  the  Earth's  surface.  Fur- 
ther, by  slow  but  inevitable  geologic  changes,  especially  those  of 
elevation  and  subsidence,  the  climate  and  physical  characters  of 
every  habitat  are  modified  ;  while  old  habitats  are  destroyed  and 

1  Vol.  I,  §  148. 


n6  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

new  are  formed.  This,  too,  we  noted l  as  a  constant  cause  of 
migrations  and  of  consequent  alterations  of  environment.  Now 
though  the  human  race  differs  from  other  races  in  having  a 
power  of  artificially  counteracting  external  changes,  yet  there 
are  limits  to  this  power ;  and,  even  were  there  no  limits,  the 
changes  could  not  fail  to  work  their  effects  indirectly,  if  not 
directly.  If,  as  is  thought  probable,  these  astronomic  cycles  entail 
recurrent  glacial  periods  in  each  hemisphere,  then,  parts  of  the 
Earth  that  are  at  one  time  thickly  peopled,  will  at  another  time, 
be  almost  deserted,  and  vice  versa.  The  geologically  caused 
alterations  of  climate  and  surface,  must  produce  further  slow  re- 
distributions of  population  ;  and  other  currents  of  people,  to  and 
from  different  regions,  will  be  necessitated  by  the  rise  of  succes- 
sive centers  of  higher  civilization.  Consequently,  mankind  cannot 
but  continue  to  undergo  changes  of  environment,  physical  and 
moral,  analogous  to  those  which  they  have  thus  far  been  under- 
going. Such  changes  may  eventually  become  slower  and  less 
marked  ;  but  they  can  never  cease.  And  if  they  can  never  cease, 
there  can  never  arise  a  perfect  adaptation  of  human  nature  to  its 
conditions  of  existence.  To  establish  that  complete  correspond- 
ence between  inner  and  outer  actions  which  constitutes  the 
highest  life  and  greatest  power  of  self-preservation  there  must  be 
a  prolonged  converse  between  the  organism  and  circumstances 
that  remain  the  same.  If  the  external  relations  are  being  altered 
while  the  internal  relations  are  being  adjusted  to  them,  the  adjust- 
ment can  never  become  exact.  And  in  the  absence  of  exact 
adjustment,  there  cannot  exist  that  theoretically  highest  power  of 
self-preservation  with  which  there  would  coexist  the  theoretically 
lowest  power  of  race-production. 

Hence  though  the  number  of  premature  deaths  may  ultimately 
become  very  small,  it  can  never  become  so  small  as  to  allow  the 
average  number  of  offspring  from  each  pair  to  fall  as  low  as  two. 
Some  average  number  between  two  and  three  may  be  inferred  as 
the  limit  — a  number,  however,  that  is  not  likely  to  be  quite  con- 
stant, but  may  be  expected  at  one  time  to  increase  somewhat  and 
afterwards  to  decrease  somewhat,  according  as  variations  in  physical 
and  social  conditions  lower  or  raise  the  cost  of  self-preservation. 

1  Vol.  I,  §  148. 


THE  DECLINING  BIRTH  RATE  117 

Be  this  as  it  may,  however,  it  is  manifest  that  in  the  end, 
pressure  of  population  and  its  accompanying  evils  will  disappear ; 
and  will  leave  a  state  of  things  requiring  from  each  individual  no 
more  than  a  normal  and  pleasurable  activity.  Cessation  in  the 
decrease  of  fertility  implies  cessation  in  the  development  of  the 
nervous  system  ;  and  this  implies  a  nervous  system  that  has  be- 
come equal  to  all  that  is  demanded  of  it — has  not  to  do  more 
than  is  natural  to  it.  But  that  exercise  of  faculties  which  does 
not  exceed  what  is  natural,  constitutes  gratification.  In  the  end, 
therefore,  the  obtainment  of  subsistence  and  discharge  of  all  the 
parental  and  social  duties,  will  require  just  that  kind  and  that 
amount  of  action  needful  to  health  and  happiness. 

The  necessary  antagonism  of  Individuation  and  Genesis,  not 
only,  then,  fulfills  with  precision  the  a  priori  law  of  maintenance 
of  race,  from  Monad  up  to  Man,  but  insures  final  attainment  of 
the  highest  form  of  this  maintenance  —  a  form  in  which  the 
amount  of  life  shall  be  the  greatest  possible,  and  the  births  and 
deaths  the  fewest  possible.  This  antagonism  could  not  fail  to 
work  out  the  results  we  see  it  working  out.  The  excess  of  fer- 
tility has  itself  rendered  the  process  of  civilization  inevitable  ; 
and  the  process  of  civilization  must  inevitably  diminish  fertility, 
and  at  last  destroy  its  excess.  From  the  beginning,  pressure  of 
population  has  been  the  proximate  cause  of  progress.  It  produced 
the  original  diffusion  of  the  race.  It  compelled  men  to  abandon 
predatory  habits  and  take  to  agriculture.  It  led  to  the  clearing 
of  the  Earth's  surface.  It  forced  men  into  the  social  state  ;  made 
social  organization  inevitable  ;  and  has  developed  the  social  senti- 
ments. It  has  stimulated  to  progressive  improvements  in  produc- 
tion, and  to  increased  skill  and  intelligence.  It  is  daily  thrusting 
us  into  closer  contact  and  more  mutually  dependent  relationships. 
And  after  having  caused,  as  it  ultimately  must,  the  due  peopling 
of  the  globe,  and  the  raising  of  all  its  habitable  parts  into  the 
highest  state  of  culture  —  after  having  brought  all  processes  for 
the  satisfaction  of  human  wants  to  perfection  —  after  having,  at 
the  same  time,  developed  the  intellect  into  complete  competency 
for  its  work,  and  the  feelings  into  complete  fitness  for  social  life 
• — after  having  done  all  this,  the  pressure  of  population,  as  it 
gradually  finishes  its  work,  must  gradually  bring  itself  to  an  end. 


CHAPTER    III 

SOCIALISM   AND    POPULATION 

Moral  restraint  under  socialism,  —  an  early  English  socialist's  view,  118.  —  The 
economic  independence  of  women  as  a  check  to  population,  123.  —  The  views  of 
Malthus  with  regard  to  population-increase  under  socialism,  125.  —  Would  social- 
ism remove  the  institutional  checks  inherent  in  private  property  and  competitive 
organization?  127.  —  The  necessity  for  state  pensions  for  mothers,  131. 

[From  the  time  of  Malthus,  orthodox  economists  have  been 
unable  to  see  the  expediency  of  socialism,  among  other  reasons 
because  of  their  belief  that  socialism  would  weaken  the  prudential 
check  and  defeat  its  own  .ends  in  a  flood  of  population.  Socialists 
as  a  rule  have  not  demonstrated  either  much  inclination  or  much 
ability  to  meet  this  charge  squarely,  but  the  development  of 
democracy,  the  increasing  economic  independence  of  woman,  and 
society's  revaluation  of  woman  as  a  human  being  have  furnished 
them  with  a  powerful  counterargument.  Meanwhile  some  of 
them  are  advocating  state  pensions  for  all  mothers,  as  an  aid 
to  economic  independence.  This  proposal  must  not  be  confused 
with  the  philanthropic  or  charitable  state  aid  given  to  widowed 
mothers.] 

8.    PRUDENTIAL  RESTRAINT  UNDER  SOCIALISM1 

If  under  the  individual  exertion  and  competition  of  equal  or 
even  partial  security,  the  progress  of  improvement  and  consequent 
increase  of  comforts,  would  constantly  tend  to  increase  the  pru- 
dential check,  and  limit  the  increase  of  numbers  to  the  constantly 

1  By  William  Thompson.  Adapted  from  An  Inquiry  into  the  Principles  of  the 
Distribution  of  Wealth  Most  Conducive  to  Human  Happiness,  pp.  545-562. 
London,  1824. 

118 


SOCIALISM  AND  POPULATION  119 

increasing  command  of  enjoyments ;  what  would  be  the  peculiar 
effects  under  that  branch  of  equal  security,  which  takes  mutual 
cooperation  for  its  mode  of  production,  and  equality  for  its  rule 
of  enjoyment  ? 1 

Let  us  suppose,  then,  that  the  state  of  the  country  in  which 
these  [socialist]  communities  exist,  is  merely  stationary,  and  ad- 
mits of  no  increase  of  population,  of  nothing  more  than  the 
replacing  by  new  births  those  who  yearly  cease  to  live.  In  such 
a  state  of  things,  in  ordinary  society,  as  we  have  seen,  when  the  peo- 
ple live  in  comfort,  the  prudential  check  is  called  into  full  exer- 
tion, and  is  abundantly  adequate  to  prevent  an  injurious  increase 
of  members,  or  such  as  would  lessen  those  comforts  :  but  when 
the  circumstances  of  the  people  are  wretched,  it  is  not  the  pru- 
dential check  that  operates ;  prudence  has  no  place  amidst  eternal 
want ;  breeding  goes  on  as  amongst  the  lower  animals,  till  cold, 
nakedness,  hunger,  disease,  seize  on  their  victims  and  keep  down 
the  population  by  misery  to  the  level  of  their  wretched  means  of 
support.  What  then  is  the  modification  that  would  be  presented 
in  the  use  of  the  prudential  check  by  means  of  the  system  of  co- 
operation, reposing,  as  all  industry  must  repose,  under  the  shelter 
of  security  ?  First,  abundant  comforts  and  the  habit  of  enjoying 
would  beget  an  unwillingness  to  part  with  them  as  before.  Next, 
superior  information  and  extended  sympathy  would  increase  and 
justify  this  disinclination,  from  a  view  of  the  discomfort  it  would 
produce  to  the  new  sharers  as  well  as  to  the  old.  True  that 
the  inconveniences  of  a  large  family  would  not  under  mutual  co- 
operation press  so  heavily  on  the  individual  as  under  competition 
with  the  most  perfect  equal  security  ;  but  a  regard  for  the  common 
welfare  and  common  loss  of  comforts  in  which  their  own  would 
be  included,  would  soon  become  at  least  as  powerful  a  curb,  in 
such  minds  of  cooperators,  as  the  simple  individual  motive  pro- 
duces in  the  minds  of  competitors.  Suppose  this  motive  however, 
of  the  loss  of  general  comforts,  to  be  ever  so  much  weakened,  to 
be  reduced  to  nothing,  still  no  evil  would  arise  from  its  absence  ; 
for  the  circumstances  of  the  new  communities  form  such  a  bar- 
rier around  them  in  the  way  of  population,  as  would  seem  almost 

1  That  is,  under  socialism.  —  ED. 


120  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

to  render  superfluous  the  exercise  of  that  prudence,  with  which, 
on  this  as  on  other  occasions,  they  must  be  preeminently  imbued. 

The  case  supposed  is,  that  the  cooperating  community  cannot 
increase  its  numbers  without  decreasing  its  comforts  by  divid- 
ing them  amongst  a  larger  number,  and  that  this  numerical 
expansion  of  diminished  enjoyment  will  not  counterbalance  the 
loss  of  its  intensity  to  the  smaller  number.  It  is  hardly  pos- 
sible to  conceive  any  set  of  expedients  better  calculated  to  meet 
such  a  contingency,  than  those  proposed  for  the  cooperating 
communities. 

There  is  no  check  or  inconvenience  from  want  felt  by  the 
married  from  inequalities  as  to  numbers  of  children,  all  being 
equally  educated  and  maintained  at  the  common  board  :  the  pecul- 
iar inconvenience  is  simply  that  of  the  pain,  trouble,  and  care, 
chiefly  on  the  woman's  side,  of  nourishing  and  attending  chil- 
dren till  two  years  old.  From  that  age  the  peculiar  trouble  ceases. 
Many  married  persons  in  such  communities,  under  such  circum- 
stances, would  doubtless  study  the  means  of  enjoying  in  the 
highest  degree  every  pleasure  of  personal  attachment,  and  even 
increasing  those  pleasures,  without  the  necessity  of  a  continual 
increase  of  births  —  an  object,  simple,  reconcilable  with  the  ut- 
most delicacy,  and  demanding  nothing  but  a  mental  effort  from 
the  party  whom  a  new  birth  would  most  inconvenience.  In  agri- 
cultural districts  of  general  society,  where  the  capabilities  of  land 
and  industry,  and  habits  of  the  people,  have  been  for  a  long 
time  stationary,  a  marriage  does  not  take  place  until  an  opening 
presents  itself  of  succeeding  to  the  occupation  and  establishment 
of  old  couples,  or  of  those  prematurely  cut  off  by  casualties.  In 
such  places,  where  the  whole  subject  of  overpopulation  and  its 
effects  is  brought  within  a  narrow  compass  under  the  eye  of  the 
most  simple,  as  in  parts  of  Norway  and  Switzerland,  we  are  told 
that  they  are  perfectly  understood,  the  prudential  check  is  in  the 
highest  state  of  operation,  comforts  are  not  lessened  by  any  tend- 
ency to  breed  beyond  the  means  of  support  :  and  added  to  all 
this,  early  and  tender  attachments  and  domestic  happiness  and 
all  the  happiness  that  the  sexes  can  render  each  other,  are  per- 
haps at  their  highest  point.  If  such  be  the  effect  of  having 


SOCIALISM  AND  POPULATION  1 21 

the  whole  subject  brought  before  the  eye,  under  the  system  of 
competition,  where  the  exertion  of  prudence  on  the  part  of  every 
individual  is  requisite,  the  exertion  of  prudence  on  the  part  of 
the  uninformed  youth ;  what  will  be  the  effect  of  having  the  sub- 
ject still  more  concentrated,  of  having  the  population  concerns 
of  a  whole  community  more  simple,  clear,  and  less  liable  to 
chance,  than  those  of  any  individual  family,  under  the  system  of 
competition  ?  What  will  be  the  effect  of  having  the  deliberative 
prudence  of  the  whole  community  guiding,  instructing,  and  if 
necessary  supplying  the  place  of  the  individual  prudence  of,  the 
young,  while  at  the  same  time  that  individual  prudence,  from 
previous  education  and  completeness  of  the  facts  before  it,  can- 
not possibly  make  a  false  judgment ;  or  if  it  err  at  all,  must  be 
with  full  perception  of  the  circumstances  necessary  to  the  forma- 
tion of  a  right  judgment  ?  Marriage  would  of  course  under  these 
circumstances  be  late  ;  later  in  proportion  to  the  healthiness  of 
the  community ;  ten  years  perhaps  later  than  where  the  circum- 
stances of  the  society  admitted  of  a  pretty  rapid  increase. 

There  is  a  way,  before  alluded  to,  by  which  early  marriages 
and  universal  healthiness,  may  coexist  with  a  stationary  popula- 
tion. Sexual,  intellectual,  and  moral  pleasures  would  be  much 
increased  thereby  to  the  married  parties.  A  mental  effort  on  the 
side  of  refinement,  not  of  grossness,  is  all  the  price  necessary  to 
be  paid,  and  by  only  one  party,  for  early  marriages  and  mutual 
endearments,  where  the  circumstances  of  society  permit  no  in- 
crease of  population.  If  this  expedient  of  gentle  exercise  be  not 
adopted,  the  risk  of  the  evil  —  at  whatever  it  may  be  estimated  — 
of  illicit  intercourse,  must  be  incurred.  From  the  deplorable  con- 
sequence of  such  intercourse,  in  the  way  of  prostitution  and  all 
its  miseries,  the  cooperating  communities,  as  before  shown,  would, 
from  their  very  organization,  be  altogether  relieved.  Women  have 
as  much  command  as  men  over  the  common  property  of  the  com- 
munity, partake  of  the  same  education,  and  thus  raising  them- 
selves to  the  same  level,  cast  off  at  one  bound  their  antiquated 
degradations  and  miseries,  and  at  least  double  the  happiness  of 
both  sexes  by  raising  all  their  intercourse  to  that  of  intelligence 
and  affection  amongst  equals. 


122  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

So  very  trivial  being  the  evils  to  be  apprehended  from  the 
principle  of  population  amongst  the  cooperating  communities, 
even  under  the  most  unfavorable  circumstances  in  which  they  can 
be  placed ;  what,  if  any,  are  the  evils  to  be  apprehended  from 
this  principle  when  the  circumstances  are  more  favorable  and 
admit  of  an  increase  of  population  more  or  less  rapid  ? 

What  effects  as  to  happiness  would  arise  from  the  principle  of 
population  amongst  cooperating  communities  in  an  advancing 
state  of  society,  under  the  shield  of  equal  security,  or  under  repre- 
sentative systems  approaching  to  equal  security,  limited  only  by 
the  want  of  knowledge  amongst  the  general  society  adopting  such 
representative  systems  ? 

If  in  general  society,  such  a  state  of  things  renders,  even 
amongst  individual  competitors,  the  exercise  of  prudence  as  to 
marriage  almost  superfluous,  how  much  more  will  it  relieve  partic- 
ular individuals  from  the  anxious  cares  of  numerous  children, 
where  no  increase  of  exertion  or  privation  of  comfort  will  press 
upon  the  parents  of  many  children  more  than  on  those  of  a  few ! 
excepting  always  the  additional  pain  of  the  first  two  years  of  the 
children's  existence.  Why  should  a  father  and  mother  be  pun- 
ished —  in  diminished  comforts  —  for  having  large  families  ?  To 
prevent  premature  marriages  ?  It  can  have  no  such  effect.  The 
average  number  of  children  is  all  that  is  or  ought  to  be  calcu- 
lated upon  ;  exceptions  cannot  form  the  general  rule.  Peculiar 
fecundity,  altogether  out  of  the  power  of  calculation,  generally 
occasions  large  families.  The  occupation  of  almost  all  the  bloom 
and  vigor  of  life  of  the  mother,  and  the  numerous  casualties  as 
to  health  attendant  on  a  constant  succession  of  children,  are 
surely  inconveniences  enough  to  limit  the  desire  to  a  moderate 
number  without  superadding  comparative  penury  in  the  midst  of 
general  prosperity.  If  the  society  be  advancing,  and  there  be 
room  for  increased  numbers  without  diminishing  actual  comforts 
to  the  general  mass  of  productive  laborers,  why  should  they  whom 
chance  (causes  which  they  could  not  calculate  or  control)  has 
made  most  instrumental  to  this  increase  be  more  inconvenienced  by 
it  than  the  necessity  of  the  case  (physical  or  unavoidable  moral 
causes)  requires  ?  The  parents,  particularly  the  mother,  should 


SOCIALISM  AND  POPULATION  123 

be  assisted  and  relieved  under  such  circumstances ;  their  means 
should  be  increased,  not  diminished.  Under  individual  compe- 
tition such  evils  are  perhaps  unavoidable.  No  remedy,  except  in 
the  way  of  insurance,  and  that  very  partial  and  wasteful,  could 
be  applied  :  while  under  mutual  cooperation  the  evil  is  completely 
remedied  by  an  insurance  exempt  from  waste,  the  joint  efforts  of 
all  providing  for  the  whole  of  the  children  in  whatever  numbers 
born  to  particular  individuals.  From  the  greater  part  of  the  trou- 
bles and  anxieties  of  excessive  numbers  of  children  parents  are 
relieved ;  while  all  means  of  endearment  by  unrestricted  commu- 
nication are  kept  open  to  them. 

Thus,  as  affects  population,  are  the  greatest  benefits  of  early 
marriages  secured  by  cooperation  to  all  who  think  proper  to  con- 
tract them,  while  the  evils  arising  occasionally  from  them  are,  by 
an  invisible  and  unerring  system  of  insurance,  reduced  to  their 
lowest  level,  to  those  bars  which  nature  has  imposed.  The  great 
advantage  of  these  cooperating  communities  over  the  same  num- 
ber of  individuals  acting  by  competition,  particularly  as  regards 
population,  is  that  the  whole  subject  is  always  plainly  before  the 
eyes  of  the  whole  community ;  all  gambling  individual  speculation 
is  precluded ;  imprudence  is  rendered  so  palpable,  and  public 
opinion  so  strong,  that  there  is  a  moral  impossibility  of  the  occur- 
rence of  imprudence  :  while  all  factitious  love  of  wealth  being  re- 
moved, wherever  a  preponderance  of  happiness  can  be  gained  to 
all  by  early  marriages  and  increasing  numbers,  beyond  the  evils 
of  diminished  comforts  for  all,  there  and  there  only  will  such 
marriages  take  place. 

9.  THE  ECONOMIC   INDEPENDENCE   OF  WOMEN  AS  A 
CHECK  TO   POPULATION  l 

Before  the  eyes  of  both  [Malthus  and  Godwin]  there  was  grow- 
ing up  a  power  unobserved  by  either,  but  predestined  to  solve 
their  problem.  Commerce  could  never  cheapen  itself  out  of  exist- 
ence while  population,  varying  with  cheapness  of  food,  kept  up 

1  By  C.  L.  James.  From  Anarchism  and  Malthus,  pp.  28-30.  Mother  Earth 
Publishing  Co.,  New  York,  1910. 


124  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  struggle  for  existence  :  nor,  though  commerce  which  cannot 
do  that  teaches  solidarity,  could  it  prevent  recurrence  of  those 
crises  when  the  "eyeless  I  howls  in  darkness."  But  the  increase 
of  the  prudential  check  on  population  has  always  kept  up  with, 
or  rather  it  has  gone  before  and  been  the  source  of,  economic 
progress.  Its  increase  has  depended  on  that  of  hope,  this  on 
increase  of  liberty,  increase  of  liberty  on  those  "  accidents"  by 
which  Providence  has  from  time  to  time  interfered  to  give  men 
intent  on  enslaving  each  other  and  themselves  another  call  to 
reflection.  If,  then,  there  be  a  tendency  in  the  bourgeois  system 
which  brings  liberty  and  hope  to  women ;  from  that  we  may 
really  hope  revolutionary  changes.  For  the  female  is  the  less 
amorous  sex.  The  last  proposition,  which  certainly  does  sound 
like  a  stock  assertion,  may  have  been  unknown  to  both  Malthus 
and  Godwin.  But  no  reader  of  Darwin  can  help  knowing  that  it 
has  been  demonstrated  by  exhaustive  application  to  every  animal 
species  and  been  found  the  clue  to  progress  through  heredity. 
Women  have  never  chosen  to  breed  food  for  gunpowder.  They 
have  submitted  to  do  so  only  because  they  could  not  help  them- 
selves. Now  there  is  in  the  bourgeois  system  a  tendency,  which 
by  bringing  liberty  and  hope  to  women,  promises  far  more  ener- 
getic restraint  on  propagation  than  the  world  has  ever  known,  — 
a  tendency  which  capitalists  view  with  indifference  ;  reactionaries 
and  socialists,  not  infrequently  with  alarm  ;  judicious  friends  of 
humanity,  with  unmixed  satisfaction.  The  wages  paid  directly 
to  women  in  the  factories  first  afforded  to  proletarian  women, 
unprotected  by  settlements  or  other  contrivances  of  the  rich,  a 
means  to  live  which  was  not  easily  taken  from  them.  True  to 
the  maxim  that  it  is  not  misery  but  hope  which  works  improve- 
ment, they,  who  till  now  had  been  well  enough  content  not  to 
own  themselves,  became  refractory  the  moment  they  had  some- 
thing to  lose.  The  entire  modern  movement  for  the  property 
rights  of  married  women,  equality  of  pay  with  men  for  all  work- 
ing women,  opening  of  all  the  trades  to  women,  political  equality 
of  the  sexes,  easy  divorce,  began  with  employment  of  women  as 
breadwinners,  which  came  in  as  a  necessity  of  the  bourgeois 
situation. 


SOCIALISM  AND  POPULATION  125 

The  Malthusian  theory  is  the  fatal  objection  to  every  form  of 
socialism,  even  if  called  anarchism,  which  encourages  man  to 
think  that  he  can  enslave  woman  and  escape  the  most  righteous 
retribution  of  being  a  slave  himself.  It  is  the  strongest  possible 
argument  for  that  kind  of  socialism  or  anarchism  which  proposes, 
through  complete  emancipation  of  women,  to  abolish  the  funda- 
mental tyranny  from  whence  all  others  spring. 

10.    HOW  SECURE  THE  EXERCISE  OF  MORAL  RESTRAINT 
UNDER  SOCIALISM?1 

It  is  a  very  superficial  observation  which  has  sometimes  been 
made,  that  it  is  a  contradiction  to  lay  great  stress  upon  the  effi- 
cacy of  moral  restraint  in  an  improved  and  improving  state  of 
society,  according  to  the  present  structure  of  it,  and  yet  to  sup- 
pose that  it  would  not  act  with  sufficient  force  in  a  system  of 
equality,  which  almost  always  presupposes  a  great  diffusion  of 
information  and  a  great  improvement  of  the  human  mind. 
Those  who  have  made  this  observation  do  not  see  that  the  en- 
couragement and  motive  to  moral  restraint  are  at  once  destroyed 
in  a  system  of  equality  and  community  of  goods. 

Let  us  suppose  that  in  a  system  of  equality,  in  spite  of  the 
best  exertions  to  procure  more  food,  the  population  is  pressing 
hard  against  the  limits  of  subsistence,  and  all  are  becoming  very 
poor.  It  is  evidently  necessary  under  these  circumstances,  in 
order  to  prevent  the  society  from  starving,  that  the  rate  at  which 
the  population  increases  should  be  retarded.  But  who  are  the 
persons  that  are  to  exercise  the  restraint  thus  called  for,  and 
either  to  marry  late  or  not  at  all  ?  It  does  not  seem  to  be  a 
necessary  consequence  of  a  system  of  equality  that  all  the  human 
passions  should  be  at  once  extinguished  by  it ;  but  if  not,  those 
who  might  wish  to  marry  would  feel  it  hard  that  they  should  be 
among  the  number  forced  to  restrain  their  inclinations.  As  all 
would  be  equal  and  in  similar  circumstances,  there  would  be  no 
reason  whatever  why  one  individual  should  think  himself  obliged 

1  By  T.  R.  Malthus.  From  An  Essay  on  the  Principle  of  Population,  gth  edition, 
pp.  285-286.  London, 


126  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

to  practice  the  duty  of  restraint  more  than  another.  The  thing 
however  must  be  done,  with  any  hope  of  avoiding  universal 
misery ;  and  in  a  state  of  equality  the  necessary  restraint  could 
only  be  effected  by  some  general  law.  But  how  is  this  law  to 
be  supported,  and  how  are  the  violations  of  it  to  be  punished  ? 
Is  the  man  who  marries  early  to  be  pointed  at  with  the  finger 
of  scorn  ?  is  he  to  be  whipped  at  the  cart's  tail  ?  is  he  to  be 
confined  for  years  in  a  prison  ?  is  he  to  have  his  children  ex- 
posed ?  Are  not  all  direct  punishments  for  an  offense  of  this 
kind  shocking  and  unnatural  to  the  last  degree  ?  And  yet  if  it 
be  absolutely  necessary  in  order  to  prevent  the  most  overwhelm- 
ing wretchedness,  that  there  should  be  some  restraint  on  the 
tendency  to  early  marriages,  when  the  resources  of  the  country 
are  only  sufficient  to  support  a  slow  rate  of  increase,  can  the 
most  fertile  imagination  conceive  one  at  once  so  natural,  so  just, 
so  consonant  to  the  laws  of  God  and  to  the  best  laws  framed 
by  the  most  enlightened  men,  as  that  each  individual  should  be 
responsible  for  the  maintenance  of  his  own  children  ;  that  is, 
that  he  should  be  subjected  to  the  natural  inconveniences  and 
difficulties  arising  from  the  indulgence  of  his  inclinations  and  to 
no  other  whatever  ? 

That  this  natural  check  to  early  marriages  arising  from  a  view 
of  the  difficulty  attending  the  support  of  a  large  family  operates 
very  widely  throughout  all  classes  of  society  in  every  civilized 
state,  and  may  be  expected  to  be  still  more  effective  as  the 
lower  classes  of  people  continue  to  improve  in  knowledge  and 
prudence,  cannot  admit  of  the  slightest  doubt.  But  the  opera- 
tion of  this  natural  check  depends  exclusively  upon  the  exist- 
ence of  the  laws  of  property  and  succession  ;  and  in  a  state  of 
equality  and  community  of  property  could  only  be  replaced  by 
some  artificial  regulation  of  a  very  different  stamp,  and  a  much 
more  unnatural  character.  Of  this  Mr.  Owen  is  fully  sensible, 
and  has  in  consequence  taxed  his  ingenuity  to  the  utmost  to 
invent  some  mode  by  which  the  difficulties  arising  from  the 
progress  of  population  could  be  got  rid  of  in  the  state  of  society 
to  which  he  looks  forward.  His  absolute  inability  to  suggest 
any  mode  of  accomplishing  this  object  that  is  not  unnatural, 


SOCIALISM  AND  POPULATION  127 

immoral,  or  cruel  in  a  high  degree,  together  with  the  same 
want  of  success  in  every  other  person,  ancient  or  modern,  who 
has  made  a  similar  attempt,  seem  to  show  that  the  argument 
against  systems  of  equality  founded  on  the  principle  of  popula- 
tion does  not  admit  of  a  plausible  answer  even  in  theory.  The  fact 
of  the  tendency  of  population  to  increase  beyond  the  means  of 
subsistence  may  be  seen  in  almost  every  register  of  a  country 
parish  in  the  kingdom.  The  unavoidable  effect  of  this  tendency 
to  depress  the  whole  body  of  the  people  in  want  and  misery, 
unless  the  progress  of  the  population  be  somehow  or  other 
retarded,  is  equally  obvious ;  and  the  impossibility  of  checking 
the  rate  of  increase  in  a  state  of  equality,  without  resorting  to 
regulations  that  are  unnatural,  immoral,  or  cruel,  forms  an 
argument  at  once  conclusive  against  every  such  system. 

11.  PRIVATE   PROPERTY  AND  THE   PRUDENTIAL  CHECK1 

Progress  has  been  marked  by  a  lowering  of  the  general  birth 
rate,  a  still  greater  lowering  of  the  death  rate,  and  an  improve- 
ment in  the  arts  which  has  enabled  the  increased  population  to 
live  in  greater  comfort  than  before.  But  it  has  left  certain  parts 
of  the  population  in  a  state  where  they  are  constantly  on  the  verge 
of  starvation.  Is  this  to  be  regarded  as  a  necessary  incident  of 
progress,  or  as  an  unnecessary  evil  which  constitutes  an  indict- 
ment against  the  modern  industrial  system  ?  Malthus  holds  the 
former  view ;  the  socialists  the  latter. 

The  successive  points  in  the  Malthusian  theory  may  be  summed 
up  as  follows : 

1.  A  low  death  rate  is  a  necessity  for  national  prosperity.    A 
high  death  rate  (say  40  per  1000)  means  a  low  average  duration 
of  life  (say  twenty-five  years),  much  disease,  and  little  industrial 
efficiency. 

2.  Any  excess  of  birth  rate  over  death  rate  means  increased 
population,  and,  in  long-established  communities,  increased  den- 
sity of  population.     As  long  as  this  increase  is  accompanied  by 

1  By  Arthur  T.  Hadley.  From  Population  and  Capital.  Publications  of  the 
American  Economic  Association,  Vol.  IX,  1894,  pp.  557-566. 


128  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

corresponding  improvements  in  the  arts  of  producing  and  utiliz- 
ing food,  it  has  no  adverse  effect ;  but  when  the  increase  of  num- 
bers is  more  rapid  than  this,  it  means  less  food  per  unit  of  labor, 
more  disease,  stoppage  of  accumulation  of  capital  and  of  the  prog- 
ress which  is  dependent  on  such  accumulations. 

3.  The  physiological  possibilities  of  the  birth  rate  are  so,  far 
in  excess  of  any  death  rate  which  is  consonant  with  social  pros- 
perity, that  the  improvement  in  the  arts  of  food  supply  has  not 
kept  pace  with  this  possible  excess  and  cannot  be  expected  to  do 
so.  This  difference  must  therefore  be  reduced  by  "  preventive  " 
checks  to  lessen  the  birth  rate.  An  individual  who  refuses  to 
conform  to  this  necessity  has  himself  to  blame  for  his  poverty 
and  that  of  his  children,  and  must  expect  to  see  their  numbers 
reduced  by  the  positive  checks  of  famine  and  disease. 

The  socialistic  criticism  of  Malthus  may  without  unfairness, 
and  with  great  gain  in  perspicuity,  be  analyzed  into  two  heads  : 
(i)  There  is  almost  never,  in  civilized  society,  a  present  or  imme- 
diate pressure  of  population  upon  subsistence.  There  is  always 
food  enough  to  go  around,  if  it  were  only  better  distributed.  (2)  If 
such  a  distribution  were  made,  there  is  no  likelihood  of  a  future 
pressure  of  population  upon  subsistence,  because  increased  comfort 
is  accompanied  by  a  lower  birth  rate  instead  of  a  higher  one. 

The  last  point  is  erroneous.  It  is  true  that  as  society  exists 
at  present,  high  comfort  and  low  birth  rate  are  commonly  asso- 
ciated, because  comfort  is  made  to  depend  upon  prudence.  Let 
the  comfort  be  made  independent  of  the  exercise  of  prudence, 
as  in  the  operation  of  the  English  poor  law  at  the  beginning  of 
this  century,  and  the  birth  rate  tends  to  increase  rather  than  di- 
minish. It  may  not  be  exactly  true,  as  some  Malthusians  would 
have  us  believe,  that  the  low  birth  rate  is  the  cause  of  the  com- 
fort ;  but  it  is  much  farther  from  the  truth  to  assert  that  the 
comfort  is  the  cause  of  the  low  birth  rate.  Both  are  the  results 
of  a  common  cause  —  the  exercise  of  prudence,  which  gives  high 
comfort  and  low  birth  rate  to  those  who  are  capable  of  practicing 
it,  while  those  who  are  incapable  of  so  doing  have  at  once  a  higher 
birth  rate  and  lower  level  of  comfort. 


SOCIALISM  AND  POPULATION  129 

This  line  of  thought  enables  us  to  explain  satisfactorily  a  phe- 
nomenon which  has  been  misunderstood  by  many  of  the  opponents 
of  Malthus,  namely,  that  the  fear  of  starvation  does  not  lower  the 
birth  rate  so  much  as  the  fear  of  losing  caste.  It  is  not  that  the 
desire  of  decencies  in  itself  constitutes  a  greater  preventive  check 
to  population  than  the  need  of  subsistence  ;  but  that  the  need  of 
subsistence  is  felt  by  all  men  alike,  emotional  as  well  as  intellec- 
tual, while  the  desire  of  decencies  stamps  the  man  or  the  race 
that  possesses  it  as  having  reached  the  level  of  intellectual  moral- 
ity. Ethical  selection  can  therefore  operate  on  the  latter  as  it 
does  not  on  the  former.  The  intellectual  man  has  possibilities  of 
self-restraint  which  the  emotional  man  has  not.  Give  the  intel- 
lectual man  the  chance  to  reap  the  benefit  of  such  self-restraint 
and  you  will  find  reduced  birth  rate  and  increased  comfort. 

There  are  some  cases  under  the  existing  social  order  where  men 
who  are  capable  of  higher  things  multiply  recklessly  through  sheer 
hopelessness.  With  men  like  this,  a  better  distribution  of  the 
results  of  labor  would  doubtless  operate  not  only  to  increase  their 
productive  efficiency  but  to  contribute  to  their  prudence  in  marry- 
ing, and  thus  to  diminish  the  birth  rate.  But  this  result  would 
be  accomplished  by  assimilating  the  condition  of  the  hopelessly 
poor  to  the  normal  condition  of  property  owners,  and  would  be 
dependent  on  the  operation  of  those  capitalistic  motives  which  the 
majority  of  the  opponents  of  Malthus  so  severely  disapprove. 

The  more  completely  you  give  the  prudent  and  efficient  man 
control  of  the  results  of  his  labor,  the  more  you  localize  the  pres- 
sure of  population  upon  subsistence,  and  confine  the  effects  of 
this  pressure  to  a  few.  Under  such  circumstances  there  is  habit- 
ually that  surplus  of  food  on  which  the  anti-Malthusian  lays  so 
much  stress.  But  give  the  children  of  the  shiftless  the  right  to 
eat  the  substance  of  the  efficient  and  prudent,  and  you  will  soon 
lose  both  the  capital  and  the  morality  under  which  that  capital 
has  been  created,  —  witness  the  history  of  the  English  poor  law. 
The  fund  of  national  capital  is  placed  at  the  mercy  of  the  paupers, 
and  the  restraints  which  now  limit  the  number  of  these  paupers 
are  taken  away.  Let  this  process  be  carried  to  an  extreme,  and 


130  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  localized  pressure  of  population  upon  subsistence,  now  so 
familiar  under  the  name  of  poverty,  widens  more  and  more  until 
we  have  that  general  imminence  of  starvation  characteristic  of 
savage  or  half-savage  races. 

When  the  comfort  of  an  individual  is  made  dependent  upon 
his  foresight  and  prudence,  and  when  the  comfort  of  a  group  is 
made  dependent  on  the  existence  of  intellectual  as  distinct  from 
emotional  morality,  we  shall  find  prudent  men  and  prudent  races 
possessing  high  comfort  and  low  birth  rates.  The  history  of  civi- 
lization is  in  large  measure  a  history  of  this  development  of  pru- 
dence and  comfort.  Possibly  some  nations  are  carrying  this 
conscious  adaptation  of  means  to  ends  a  little  too  far  for  their 
own  good.  The  waste  of  nerve  power  connected  with  the  exercise 
of  conscious  prudence  is  a  real  evil,  and  if  carried  to  an  extreme 
may  offset  the  gain  attendant  upon  the  possession  and  accumu- 
lation of  capital.  This  is  a  fair  point  for  socialistic  criticism.  But 
with  the  average  man,  the  dangers  of  this  extreme  are  less  than 
those  of  the  other.  The  evils  of  thinking  too  much  and  trusting 
Providence  too  little  seem  small  in  comparison  with  those  which 
arise  from  trusting  Providence  for  everything  and  not  thinking 
at  all.  Doubtless  Malthus  made  a  mistake  in  giving  too  much 
countenance  to  the  idea  that  preventive  checks  must  be  conscious. 
But  his  socialist  critics  make  a  greater  mistake  in  holding  that 
such  checks  are  automatic.  The  truth  would  seem  to  be  that  such 
checks  are  for  the  most  part  institutional.  The  modern  family 
and  the  modern  law  of  capital  have  acted  as  a  powerful  system 
of  preventive  checks  to  population.  The  apparently  automatic  and 
often  nonconscious  operation  of  these  checks  must  not  blind  us 
to  the  historical  power  which  has  established  and  perpetuated  them. 

To  hope  —  as  do  the  socialistic  critics  of  the  Malthusian  theory 
—  that  the  average  character  of  a  people  will  remain  unchanged 
when  the  institutions  under  which  this  character  has  developed 
are  radically  modified  or  abolished,  is  a  fatuous  delusion. 


SOCIALISM  AND  POPULATION  131 

12.  THE  NECESSITY  FOR  STATE  PENSIONS  FOR  MOTHERS1 

The  conclusion  which  the  present  writer  draws  from  the  declin- 
ing birth  rate  is  one  of  hope,  not  of  despair.  It  is  something  to 
discover  the  cause  of  the  phenomenon.  Moreover,  the  cause  is 
one  that  we  can  counteract.  If  the  decline  in  the  birth  rate  had 
been  due  to  physical  degeneracy,  whether  brought  about  by  "  ur- 
banization "  or  otherwise,  we  should  not  have  known  how  to  cope 
with  it.  But  a  deliberately  volitional  interference,  due  chiefly  to  eco- 
nomic motives,  can  at  any  moment  be  influenced  partly  by  a  mere 
alteration  of  the  economic  conditions,  partly  by  the  opportunity 
for  the  play  of  the  other  motives  which  will  be  thereby  afforded. 

What  seems  indispensable  and  urgent  is  to  alter  the  economic 
incidence  of  childbearing.  Under  the  present  social  conditions 
the  birth  of  children  in  households  maintained  on  less  than  three 
pounds  a  week  (and  these  form  four  fifths  of  the  nation)  is 
attended  by  almost  penal  consequences.  The  wife  is  incapaci- 
tated for  some  months  from  earning  money.  For  a  few  weeks 
she  is  subject  to  a  painful  illness,  with  some  risk.  The  husband 
has  to  provide  a  lump  sum  for  the  necessary  medical  attendance 
and  domestic  service.  But  this  is  not  all.  The  parents  know  that 
for  the  next  fourteen  years  they  will  have  to  dock  themselves  and 
their  other  children  of  luxuries  and  even  of  some  of  the  neces- 
saries of  life,  just  because  there  will  be  another  mouth  to  feed. 
To  four  fifths  of  all  the  households  in  the  land  each  succeeding 
baby  means  the  probability  of  there  being  less  food,  less  clothing, 
less  house  room,  less  recreation,  and  less  opportunity  for  advance- 
ment for  every  member  of  the  family.  Similar  considerations 
appeal  even  more  strongly  to  a  majority  of  the  remaining  20  per 

1  By  Sidney  Webb.  From  The  Decline  in  the  Birth  Rate  (Fabian  Tract  No.  131. 
The  Fabian  Society,  London,  1907).  Reprinted  in  the  Popular  Science  Monthly, 
Vol.  LXIX.  Mr.  Webb  set  out  to  ascertain  the  real  cause  of  "race  suicide."  Partly 
on  statistical  evidence,  partly  on  the  basis  of  answers  to  questionnaires  sent  out 
to  about  three  hundred  married  people  "who  could  be  relied  upon  to  give  frank 
and  truthful  answers  to  a  detailed  interrogatory."  he  arrived  at  the  conclusion 
that  the  "  decline  of  the  birth  rate  is  principally,  if  not  entirely,  the  result  of 
deliberate  volition  in  the  regulation  of  the  marriage  state,"  that  is,  of  neo- 
Malthusian  practices.  That  part  of  his  article  here  reprinted  gives  his  proposal 
for  the  removal  of  the  economic  penalty  on  people  who  have  children. 


132  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

cent  of  the  population,  who  make  up  the  "  middle  "  and  profes- 
sional classes.  Their  higher  standard  of  life,  with  its  requirements 
in  the  way  of  culture  and  refinement,  and  with  the  long  and  ex- 
pensive education  which  it  demands  for  their  children,  makes  the 
advent  even  of  a  third  or  fourth  child  —  to  say  nothing  of  the 
possibility  of  a  family  of  eight  or  twelve  —  a  burden  far  more 
psychologically  depressing  than  that  of  the  wage-earner.  In  order 
that  a  due  number  of  children  may  be  born,  and  that  they  may  be 
born  rather  of  the  self-controlled  and  foreseeing  members  of  each 
class  than  of  those  who  are  reckless  or  improvident,  we  must  alter 
the  balance  of  considerations  in  favor  of  the  child-producing  family. 
The  question  is  whether  we  shall  be  able  to  turn  round  with 
sufficient  sharpness  and  in  time.  For  we  have  unconsciously 
based  so  much  of  our  social  policy  —  so  many  of  our  habits,  tra- 
ditions, prejudices,  and  beliefs  — on  the  assumption  that  the 
growth  of  population  is  always  to  be  reckoned  with,  and  even 
feared,  that  a  genuine  realization  of  the  contrary  position  will 
involve  great  changes.  There  are  thousands  of  men  thinking 
themselves  educated  citizens  to-day  to  whose  whole  system  of 
social  and  economic  beliefs  the  discovery  will  be  as  subversive  as 
was  that  announced  by  Copernicus.  We  may  at  last  understand 
what  the  modern  economist  means  when  he  tells  us  that  the  most 
valuable  of  the  year's  crops,  as  it  is  the  most  costly,  is  not  the 
wheat  harvest  or  the  lambing,  but  the  year's  quota  of  adolescent 
young  men  and  women  enlisted  in  the  productive  service  of  the 
community  ;  and  that  the  due  production  and  best  possible  care 
of  this  particular  product  is  of  far  greater  consequence  to  the 
nation  than  any  other  of  its  occupations.  Infant  mortality,  for 
instance  —  that  terrible  and  quite  needless  slaughter  within  the 
first  twelve  months  of  one  seventh  of  all  the  babies  that  are  born 
—  is  already  appealing  to  us  in  a  new  way,  though  it  is  no  greater 
than  it  was  a  generation  ago.  We  shall  suddenly  remember,  too, 
that  one  third  of  all  the  paupers  are  young  children  ;  and  we  may 
then  realize  that  it  is,  to  the  community,  of  far  more  consequence 
how  it  shall  bring  up  this  quarter  of  a  million  children  over  whom 
it  has  complete  power  than  the  exact  degree  of  hardness  with 
which  it  may  choose  to  treat  the  adults.  Instead  of  turning  out 


SOCIALISM  AND  POPULATION  133 

the  children  to  tramp  with  the  father  or  beg  with  the  mother, 
whenever  these  choose  to  take  their  discharge  from  the  work- 
house, which  is  the  invariable  practice  to-day,  we  should  rather 
jump  at  the  chance  of  "adopting"  these  unfortunate  beings  in 
order  to  make  worthy  citizens  of  them.  Half  of  the  young  pau- 
pers, moreover,  are  widows'  children,  bereft  of  the  breadwinner. 
For  them  the  community  will  have  to  arrange  to  continue  in  some 
form  or  another  the  maintenance  which  the  father  would  have 
provided,  had  he  lived.  Above  all,  we  must  encourage  the  thrifty, 
foreseeing,  prudent,  and  self-controlled  parents  to  remove  the 
check  which,  often  unwillingly  enough,  they  at  present  put  on 
their  natural  instincts  and  love  of  children.  We  must  make  it 
easier  for  them  to  undertake  family  responsibilities.  For  instance, 
the  argument  against  the  unlimited  provision  of  medical  attend- 
ance on  the  childbearing  mother  and  her  children  disappear.  We 
may  presently  find  the  leader  of  the  Opposition,  if  not  the  Prime 
Minister,  advocating  the  municipal  supply  of  milk  to  all  infants, 
and  a  free  meal  on  demand  (as  already  provided  by  a  farseeing 
philanthropist  at  Paris)  to  mothers  actually  nursing  their  babies. 
We  shall,  indeed,  have  to  face  the  problem  of  the  systematic 
endowment  of  motherhood,  and  place  this  most  indispensable  of 
all  professions  upon  an  honorable  economic  basis.  The  feeding 
of  all  the  children  at  school  appears  in  a  new  light,  and  we  come, 
at  a  stride,  appreciably  nearer  to  that  not  very  far  distant  article 
in  the  education  code  making  obligatory  in  the  time-table  a  new 
subject  —  namely,  "  12  to  I  P.M.,  table  manners  (materials  pro- 
vided)." There  would  be  no  greater  encouragement  to  parentage 
in  the  best  members  in  the  middle  and  upper  artisan  classes  than 
a  great  multiplication  of  maintenance  scholarships  for  secondary, 
technical,  and  university  education. 

Such  a  revolution  in  the  economic  incidence  of  the  burden  of 
childbearing  would  leave  the  way  open  to  the  play  of  the  best 
instincts  of  mankind.  To  the  vast  majority  of  women,  and  espe- 
cially to  those  of  fine  type,  the  rearing  of  children  would  be  the 
most  attractive  occupation,  if  it  offered  economic  advantages  equal 
to  those,  say,  of  school  teaching  or  service  in  the  post  office.  At 
present  it  is  ignored  as  an  occupation,  unremunerated,  and  in  no 


134  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

way  honored  by  the  state.  Once  the  production  of  healthy,  moral, 
and  intelligent  citizens  is  revered  as  a  social  service  and  made  the 
subject  of  deliberate  praise  and  encouragement  on  the  part  of  the 
government,  it  will,  we  may  be  sure,  attract  the  best  and  most 
patriotic  of  the  citizens.  Once  set  free  from  the  overwhelming 
economic  penalties  with  which  it  is  at  present  visited,  the  rearing 
of  a  family  may  gradually  be  rendered  part  of  the  code  of  the  ordi- 
nary citizen's  morality.  The  natural  repulsion  to  interference  in 
marital  relations  will  have  free  play.  The  mystic  obligations  of 
which  the  religious-minded  feel  the  force  will  no  longer  be  con- 
fronted by  the  dead  wall  of  economic  necessity.  To  the  present 
writer  it  seems  that  only  by  some  such  "  sharp  turn  "  in  our  way 
of  dealing  with  such  problems  can  we  avoid  race  deterioration,  if 
not  race  suicide. 


CHAPTER  IV 
EUGENICS 

The  progress  of  eugenics,  135.  —  Beginnings,  136.  —  Francis  Galton,  137. — 
Karl  Pearson,  148.  —  The  Francis  Galton  Laboratory  for  National  Eugenics, 
149.  —  Eugenic  investigations,  150.  —  The  biometric  method  vs.  the  Mendelian 
formulae,  152.  —  Early  American  eugenic  ideas,  155.  —  The  American  Genetic 
Association,  156.  —  The  Eugenics  Record  Office,  157.  —  Methods  of  practical 
eugenics,  159.  —  Attempts  to  restrict  the  increase  of  undesirables,  161.  —  Excep- 
tional ability  vs.  general  betterment,  162. —  The  psycho-physical  elite  and  the 
economic  elite,  167.  —  The  social  significance  of  hereditary  feeble-mindedness,  173. 

[Until  recently  the  population  problem  has  been  discussed  too 
much  as  if  population  were  of  unvarying  potential  quality,  no 
matter  how  much  its  quantity  might  change.  If  we  are  to  regard 
the  well-being  of  a  whole  people  as  the  right  aim  of  both  indi- 
vidual and  social  endeavor,  if  we  recognize  that  the  material  basis 
of  this  well-being  lies  in  the  power  of  man,  within  the  limits  set 
by  natural  laws,  to  utilize  natural  forces  and  materials  in  the  most 
efficient  and  economical  way,  and  if  the  psychical  content  of  life 
derived  from  this  material  basis  depends  upon  the  intellectual, 
moral,  and  aesthetic  sensitiveness  of  individual  men  and  women, 
then  it  must  be  evident  at  once  that  a  scientific  study  of  the 
economy  and  efficiency  of  a  population,  in  the  largest  sense,  must 
include  not  only  a  study  of  the  quantitative  relation  between  a 
people  and  its  natural  resources,  but  a  careful  consideration  also 
of  the  physical  and  mental  qualities  of  the  individuals,  the  families, 
and  the  stocks  which  compose  the  aggregate  population.] 

13.    THE  PROGRESS  OF  EUGENICS1 

The  idea  of  a  conscious  selective  improvement  of  the  human 
breed  is  not  new.  Like  many  another  stimulating  thought  it  was 
clearly  uttered  long  before  the  time  when  its  fresh  expression 

1  By  James  A.  Field.  Adapted  from  the  Quarterly  Journal  of  Economics, 
November,  1911,  pp.  2-46,  61-67. 

I3S 


136  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

found  the  popular  mind  in  the  ready  and  impressionable  state 
which  makes  possible  a  far-reaching  thought  movement.  Twenty- 
three  hundred  years  ago  the  political  dialogues  of  Plato  outlined  a 
policy  of  controlling  marriage  selection  and  parentage  for  the 
general  good  of  society  ;  and  declared  that  the  statesman  who 
would  advance  the  welfare  of  his  citizens  should,  like  the  fancier 
of  birds,  or  dogs,  or  horses,  take  care  to  breed  from  the  best 
only.1  Plato's  project  was  too  fantastic  for  his  time.  In  fol- 
lowing centuries  the  laws  of  the  Roman  Empire,  the  doctrines 
of  the  Church,  and  the  policies  of  mercantilist  states,  in  so  far  as 
they  took  cognizance  of  population  problems,  kept  count  in  terms 
of  soldiers,  or  souls,  or  laboring  and  taxpaying  subjects,  and  for 
the  most  part  overlooked  the  inborn  differences  of  men.  Even 
at  the  beginning  of  the  last  century,  when  the  discussion  of  popu- 
lation problems  reached  a  development  quite  unprecedented,  the 
quality  of  the  population  was  still  almost  ignored  in  the  prevailing 
concern  about  questions  of  mere  numbers. 

The  present  eugenics  movement  may  be  traced  back  definitely 
to  the  decade  beginning  with  the  year  1865,  and  more  generally 
to  the  thought-reaction  which  followed  the  publication  of  Darwin's 
Origin  of  Species  in  1859.  The  new  biological  doctrines  inevi- 
tably drew  attention  to  the  selective  significance  of  inborn  differ- 
ences, in  human  beings  as  in  other  living  forms.  Nor  was  the 
existence  of  such  differences  among  men  likely  to  be  overlooked 
by  the  reactionary  adherents  of  a  waning  aristocratic  regime, 
confronted  with  the  growing  prominence  of  the  masses,  whose 
influence  was  enlarging  with  their  new  accession  of  political 
privilege  and  with  the  more  gradual  course  of  industrial  change. 
The  stress  which  Darwin  had  laid  on  the  cumulative  selection  of 
qualities  transmitted  by  heredity  put  an  end  to  that  placid  indiffer- 
ence with  which  the  unequal  increase  of  different  social  classes 
had  been  regarded.  Even  more  positively  it  dispelled  the  illusions 
of  those  who  had  rejoiced  in  the  relative  infertility  of  the  well-to- 
do,  hailing  it  either  as  the  sign  of  prudence  in  at  least  some  places, 
or  as  a  providential  compensation  of  the  hardships  of  poverty  by 
vouchsafing  to  the  poor  an  untroubled  career  of  procreation. 

1  Republic,  459;   Laws,  773;  and  elsewhere. 


EUGENICS  137 

The  specific  starting  point  of  the  eugenics  literature  is  to  be 
recognized  in  two  articles  on  "  Hereditary  Talent  and  Char- 
acter," written  by  Francis  Galton  and  published  in  Macmillaris 
Magazine  for  June  and  August,  1865.  Impressed  by  the  plastic- 
ity of  the  physical  forms  of  animals  under  the  breeder's  selec- 
tion, Galton  here  announced  his  purpose  of  showing,  more 
pointedly  than  had  been  attempted  before,  that  the  mental  quali- 
ties of  men  are  equally  under  control.  He  not  only  repudiated 
the  prevalent  view  that  sons  of  great  men  are  usually  stupid  : 
he  went  on  to  show  by  a  mass  of  biographical  evidence  how 
strikingly  the  frequent  occurrence  of  able  sons  of  able  men  indi- 
cates that  mental  qualities,  quite  as  much  as  physical  traits,  are 
subject  to  the  principles  of  natural  inheritance.  Doubtless,  the 
son  of  an  eminent  man  may  be  favored  by  superior  opportunities. 
Advantageous  associations,  as  well  as  inherited  capacity,  may  aid 
his  career.  All  this  Galton  was  quite  willing  to  admit.  But  he 
did  not  regard  established  position  as  the  chief  reason  for  the 
recurrence  of  talent  in  distinguished  families  ;  and  to  make  his 
argument  more  conclusive  he  avoided  the  examples  of  statesmen 
and  generals,  who  might  be  thought  particularly  the  creatures  of 
privilege,  and  sought  his  facts  "  in  the  more  open  fields  of  science 
and  literature."  1  His  inferences  from  these  facts  were  eagerly 
hopeful.  "  How  vastly  would  the  offspring  be  improved,"  he 
exclaims,  "supposing  distinguished  women  to  be  commonly 
married  to  distinguished  men,  generation  after  generation,  ac- 
cording to  rules,  of  which  we  are  now  ignorant,  but  which  a 
study  of  the  subject  would  be  sure  to  evolve."2  "  If  a  twentieth 
part  of  the  cost  and  pains  were  spent  in  measures  for  the 
improvement  of  the  human  race  that  is  spent  on  the  improve- 
ment of  the  breed  of  horses  and  cattle,  what  a  galaxy  of  genius 
might  we  not  create."  3  He  expressed  the  belief  that  if  the  im- 
portance of  race  improvement  were  recognized,  and  if  the  theory 
of  heredity  were  understood,  some  way  would  be  found  to  carry 
the  improvement  into  effect.4 

1  Macmillan's  Magazine,  Vol.  XII,  p.  161.  3  Ibid.,  p.  165. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  164.  4  Ibid.,  p.  320. 


138  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Four  years  later  these  preliminary  sketches  developed  into 
a  book,  —  Hereditary  Genius,  published  in  1869.  The  main 
thesis,  that  great  ability  is  hereditary,  is  here  substantially  un- 
altered ;  supported,  now,  by  abundant  genealogical  material,  which 
nearly  fills  the  book  with  pedigrees  of  judges,  statesmen,  the 
English  peerage,  commanders,  literary  men,  men  of  science, 
poets,  musicians,  painters,  divines,  the  senior  classics  of  Cambridge, 
—  even  oarsmen  and  wrestlers,  as  examples  of  the  ability  of  the 
muscles  rather  than  of  the  mind.  The  natural  consequence  of 
the  more  careful  method  of  inquiry  and  exposition  he  adopted 
in  this  book  is  a  more  guarded  attitude  with  reference  to  putting 
into  practice,  for  ends  of  social  reform,  the  principles  just  restated 
and  reaffirmed.  Yet  the  enthusiasm  of  the  magazine  articles  may 
well  have  been  less  eloquently  convincing  of  the  possibility  of 
such  reform  than  the  book's  impressive  chapter  on  Influences 
that  Affect  the  Natural  Ability  of  Nations.1  For  in  this  the 
appeal  is  not  merely  to  fanciful  influences  which  might  be  exerted, 
but  to  the  actual  modifications  of  human  quality  which  stand 
recorded  in  history,  or  work  themselves  out  in  the  commonplace 
happenings  of  our  own  every  day.  Celibacy  of  the  intellectual 
classes  is  condemned  anew ;  the  cloisters  and  nunneries  of  the 
Middle  Ages  and  the  academic  celibacy  of  present  times  alike 
are  •  proved  apt  means  to  the  elimination  of  superior  intellect. 
The  irreparable  debasement  of  type  which  followed  the  course  of 
the  Inquisition  in  Spain  —  a  topic  already  touched  upon  by  Lyell 
in  his  Principles  of  Geology'1  —  yields  a  germane  and  telling 
argument.  Less  dramatic  though  perhaps  more  important  is 
the  lesson  drawn  from  the  fact  that  the  social  group  or  nation 
within  which  the  interval  between  generations  is  relatively  long 
will  be  outnumbered  and  overcome,  through  mere  inferiority  of 
increase. 

Galton's  first  essays  in  the  subject  he  was  later  to  call  eugenics 
had  greatly  expanded.  They  had  in  fact  grown  to  the  magnitude 
of  a  masterwork,  which  has  served  as  a  point  of  departure  for 

1  This  chapter  has  been  reprinted  in  Carver,  Sociology  and  Social  Progress, 
pp.  631-646.    Ginn  and  Company,  1905.  —  ED. 

2  loth  edition,  Vol.  II,  p.  489,  1868. 


EUGENICS  139 

his  own  later  writings  and  for  most  of  the  work  of  others  in  the 
field  which  he  had  thus  marked  out. 

A  second  pioneer  of  eugenics  was  William  Rathbone  Greg, 
already  for  years  a  well-known  writer  on  economic  and  political 
subjects.  Philanthropic  in  sympathies  and  fair  in  presentation, 
Greg  was  chiefly  distinguished  by  an  attitude  of  keen  prophetic 
criticism  of  the  tendencies  of  his  time,  and  felt  a  probably  undue 
concern  at  the  increase  of  democratic  and  popular  influence  in 
public  affairs.  So  it  was  that  he  became  aware  of  the  menace  of 
adverse  selective  influences  working  through  the  unequal  rates 
of  increase  of  different  elements  in  the  population,  and  wrote, 
quite  independently  of  Galton,  a  brilliant  article,  "  On  the  Failure 
of  '  Natural  Selection  '  in  the  Case  of  Man,"  1  which,  with  slight 
alteration,  became  the  chapter  on  Non-Survival  of  the  Fittest  in 
a  subsequent  book, —  Enigmas  of  Life?  For  races  and  nations, 
he  argued,  the  principle  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest  holds  good  ; 
but  as  regards  individuals  "  the  indisputable  effect  of  the  state  of 
social  progress  and  culture  we  have  reached  ...  is  to  counteract 
and  suspend  the  operation  of  that  righteous  and  salutary  law.  .  .  ."  3 
We  keep  alive  the  weak  and  defective ;  by  our  institution  of 
property  we  subsidize  and  perpetuate  the  incompetency  which 
may  inherit  but  could  not  produce.  The  rich  and  the  poor,  dis- 
advantaged  by  opposite  extreme  circumstances  of  excess  and 
privation,  propagate  freely.  The  prudent  members  of  the  inter- 
mediate class,  "  most  qualified  and  deserving  to  continue  the  race 
are  precisely  those  who  do  so  in  the  scantiest  measure."4  In  a 
noteworthy  passage  Greg  outlines  a  Utopian  reversal  of  prevailing 
conditions  : 

A  republic  is  conceivable  in  which  paupers  should  be  forbidden  to  propagate ; 
in  which  all  candidates  for  the  proud  and  solemn  privilege  of  continuing  an  un- 
tainted and  perfecting  race  should  be  subjected  to  a  pass  or  a  competitive 
examination,  and  those  only  be  suffered  to  transmit  their  names  and  families  to 
future  generations  who- had  a  pure,  vigorous,  and  well-developed  constitution 
to  transmit. 

However,  Greg  was  no  Utopian.    Hope  was  from  within. 

1  Frascr's  Magazine,  September,  1868.  "  London,  1872. 

3  Eraser's  Magazine,  September,  1868,  p.  356.  4  Ibid.,  pp.  360-361. 


140  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

We  can  only  trust  to  the  slow  influences  of  enlightenment  and  moral  suscepti- 
bility, percolating  downwards  and  in  time  permeating  all  ranks.  We  can  only 
watch  and  be  careful  that  any  other  influences  we  do  set  in  motion  shall  be 
such  as,  when  they  work  at  all,  may  work  in  the  right  direction. 

In  1873  Galton  was  heard  from  again.  In  an  essay  on 
"  Hereditary  Improvement,"  printed  in  Frascrs  Magazine,  he 
maintained  "that  it  is  feasible  to  improve  the  race  of  man  by  a 
system  which  shall  be  perfectly  in  accordance  with  the  moral 
sense  of  the  present  time."  1  As  the  foundation  of  this  system 
he  aimed  "  to  build  up  ...  a  sentiment  of  caste  among  those 
who  are  naturally  gifted,"  and  thus,  within  each  existing  social 
group,  to  draw  together  in  the  solidarity  of  a  new  and  exclusive 
class  consciousness  the  individuals  of  greatest  merit  for  what  he 
now  tentatively  called  "  viriculture."  2  The  achievement  of  this 
result  must  come  gradually.  Galton  did  not  expect  his  scheme 
"  to  flourish  until  the  popular  belief  shall  have  waxed  several 
degrees  warmer."3  But  intelligence  and  a  religious  sense  of 
duty  were  alike  urgent  that  a  beginning  be  made. 

I  propose  as  the  first  step,  and  the  time  is  nearly  ripe  for  it.  that  some  society 
should  undertake  three  scientific  services :  the  first,  by  means  of  a  moderate 
number  of  influential  local  agencies,  to  institute  continuous  inquiries  into  the 
facts  of  human  heredity ;  the  second,  to  be  a  center  of  information  on  heredity 
for  breeders  of  animals  and  plants ;  and  the  third,  to  discuss  and  classify  the 
facts  that  were  collected.4 

Primary  reliance  was  thus  placed  on  the  increase  and  diffusion 
of  scientific  knowledge  with  the  confident  expectation  that  if  once 
the  populace  were  convinced  of  the  import  of  heredity,  "  quite  as 
many  social  influences  as  are  necessary  will  become  directed  to 
obtain  the  desired  end."5 

Thus  far  the  forerunners  of  eugenics  had  been  Englishmen ; 
but  in  this  same  year  1873  an  important  contribution  came  from 

1  /vv/.w'.r  Jlfagtizine,  x.s.,  Vol.  VII,  January,  1873,  p.  116. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  i  19.  'A  //>/,/.,  p.  123.  4  //>/</.,  p.  124. 
5  //'/(/.,  p.  125.    At  the  close  of  the  article  Galton  unluckily  indulged  in  a  vision 

of  the  ultimate  results  of  his  project.  His  picture  of  a  class  of  the  praised  and 
privileged  fit,  superposed  on  a  population  of  the  rejected,  is  one  which  we  may 
rejoice  to  believe  impossible,  as  well  as  unjustified  by  an  intelligent  interpretation 
of  the  forces  which  he  would  set  at  work.  If  this  forecast  be  ignored,  the  article 
agrees  in  large  measure  with  the  best  eugenic  opinion  of  the  present  day. 


EUGENICS  141 

the  Continent  in  the  Histoirc  des  sciences  et  des  savants l  by 
a  distinguished  Swiss  botanist,  the  younger  Alphonse  de  Candolle. 
This  book,  like  Hereditary  Genius,  is  based  on  the  results  of 
an  inquiry  into  the  relationships  of  eminent  men.  But  De  Can- 
dolle confined  his  attention  to  men  of  science,  and  took  for  his 
criterion  of  eminence  membership  in  the  leading  honorary  scien- 
tific societies.  Cases  of  the  close  relationship  of  these  scientists 
he  found  strikingly  frequent.  Yet  his  conclusions  were  not  alto- 
gether in  accord  with  the  conclusions  of  Galton  ;  in  fact,  at  first 
sight  they  seem  flatly  contradictory.  To  heredity,  properly  speak- 
ing, he  attributed  little  effect  except  in  the  case  of  the  mathe- 
matical sciences.2  He  was  less  convinced  of  the  inheritance 
of  genius  than  Galton  had  been.  In  fact,  he  expressly  criticized 
the  extreme  conclusions  which  Galton  drew.3  Yet  he  believed 
sufficiently  in  the  heredity  of  human  qualities  to  consider  the 
possibility  of  improvement  by  artificial  selection  and  to  remark 
the  appearances  of  degeneration  due  to  selective  causes  like  war, 
medicine,  and  unequal  increase  of  rich  and  poor,  which  conserve 
the  worse  rather  than  the  better  types.  But  although  he  thus 
discussed  artificial  selection,  he  conceived  it  to  be  for  practical 
purposes  nonexistent  or  illusory :  marriages  of  the  unfit  can 
hardly  be  prevented  ;  or,  if  they  are  in  form  prevented,  they  are 
likely  to  give  way  to  illegitimacy.  The  influence  of  law  or  of 
religion  he  did  not  deny,  but  he  classed  it  with  the  factors  of 
natural,  and  not  of  artificial,  selection.  Thus,  though  .he  seemed 
inclined  to  belittle  both  the  power  of  heredity  and  the  means  by 
which  others  hoped  it  might  be  made  preponderatingly  a  power 
for  good,  his  skepticism  in  each  case  was  less  extreme  in  reality 
than  in  appearance. 

The  reaction  of  De  Candolle's  views  upon  the  work  of  Gal- 
ton was  immediate  and  unmistakable.  Characteristically  Galton 
set  about  further  investigations  of  his  own.  Convinced  that  a 
more  minute  study  of  the  antecedents  of  scientific  men  would 

1  Ilistoire   des   sciences   et  des   savants   depuis   deux  siecles  suivie  d'autres 
etudes  sur  des  sujets  scientifiques,  en  particulier  sur  la  selection  dans  1'espece 
humaine.    Geneva,  1873. 

2  Cf.  pp.  107-108.    This  and  subsequent  citations  refer  to  the  first  edition. 

3  Cf.  e.g.  pp.  243,  281,380. 


142  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

establish  the  superior  importance  of  heredity  as  contrasted  with 
education,  he  sent  a  searching  questionnaire  to  one  hundred  and 
eighty  scientists  of  reputation.  The  results  of  his  study  of  more 
than  a  hundred  replies  were  published  the  following  year  in  his 
book  entitled  English  Men  of  Science :  their  Nature  and  Nur- 
ture )•  The  result,  in  Gal  ton's  mind,  was  further  affirmation 
of  the  supremacy  of  nature  over  nurture2  —  of  inheritance  over 
training  —  so  far  as  the  two  are  separable.  "I  am  confident," 
he  wrote  in  the  preface,  "that  one  effect  of  the  evidence  here 
collected  will  be  to  strengthen  the  utmost  claims  I  ever  made  for 
the  recognition  of  the  importance  of  hereditary  influence."3 

One  decade  had  produced  all  these  writings.  Clearly,  the 
beginnings  of  eugenics  were  congenial  to  the  thought  of  that 
period.  Yet  what  was  written  seems  to  have  been  often,  as  in 
the  cases  of  Darwin  and  Greg,  an  episode,  brilliant  but  without 
direct  continuance,  in  the  course  of  other  work.  Apparently 
demonstration  of  selective  influences  reacting  on  the  quality  of 
the  population  seemed  for  the  time  rather  to  stimulate  the  new 
taste  for  biological  speculation  than  to  appeal  strongly  to  persons 
practically  concerned  with  human  degeneracy  or  with  measures  of 
human  improvement.  "  Popular  feeling  was  not  then  ripe  to 
accept  even  the  elementary  truths  of  hereditary  talent  and  char- 
acter, upon  which  the  possibility  of  Race  Improvement  depends. 
Still  less  was  it  prepared  to  consider  dispassionately  any  pro- 
posals for  practical  action."4  Even  Gal  ton,  whose  long  span  of 
consistent  intellectual  activity  is  the  closest  link  between  that 
early  outburst  of  eugenic  ideas  and  the  reawakened  eugenic  move- 
ment of  the  present,  "  laid  the  subject  wholly  to  one  side  for 
many  years."  5 

The  interim  between  1874  and  1901  was,  however,  too  pro- 
longed to  pass  without  some  new  evidence  of  Galton's  interest  in 

1  London,  1874. 

'2  "  Nature  is  all  that  a  man  brings  with  himself  into  the  world  ;  nurture  is  every 
influence  from  without  that  affects  him  after  his  birth"  (p.  12).  The  distinction 
between  nature  and  nurture  had  already  been  made  in  the  article  of  1873  on 
Hereditary  Improvement,  p.  116. 

3  Pp.  vi-vii. 

4  Gallon,  Memories  of  My  Life,  p.  310.  &  Ibid.,  p.  310. 


EUGENICS  143 

eugenics.  During  this  period  he  published,  among  other  works, 
Inquiries  into  Human  Faculty  and  its  Development  (1883),  and 
Natural  Inheritance  (1889).  Each  has  an  important  bearing  on 
his  later  writing. 

The  Inquiries  into  Human  Faculty  gave  eugenics  its  name. 

.  .  .  We  greatly  want  a  brief  word  to  express  the  science  of  improving  stock, 
which  is  by  no  means  confined  to  questions  of  judicious  mating,  but  which, 
especially  in  the  case  of  man,  takes  cognizance  of  all  influences  that  tend  in 
however  remote  a  degree  to  give  to  the  more  suitable  races  or  strains  of  blood 
a  better  chance  of  prevailing  speedily  over  the  less  suitable  than  they  otherwise 
would  have  had.  The  word  eugenics  would  sufficiently  express  the  idea ;  it  is 
at  least  a  neater  word  and  a  more  generalized  one  than  viticulture,  which  I 
once  ventured  to  use.1 

Nor  was  this  coining  of  a  term  the  only  conspicuous  contribu- 
tion to  eugenics  which  the  book  contained.  For  Galton  here 
considered,  in  a  passage  more  interesting  for  its  doubts  than  for 
its  conclusions,  the  menace  of  loss  of  stamina  through  close 
breeding  of  human  strains  ; 2  and  he  maintained  the  possibility  of 
some  system  of  marks  for  ancestral  and  personal  merit,  on  the 
basis  of  which  endowments,  portions,  or  adoption  might  be  made 
available  for  persons  of  meritorious  stock.3  Finally,4  he  fore- 
shadowed the  religious  sanction  for  eugenic  conduct  which  has 
characterized  some  of  his  most  recent  statements  of  eugenic 
principles.5 

Natural  Inheritance  was  essentially  a  study  of  the  general 
biological  principles  of  heredity.  It  dealt  not  so  much  with 
eugenics  as  with  the  foundations  of  eugenics.  But  it  has  left 
a  lasting  mark  on  subsequent  eugenic  discussion  because  of  the 
new  lengths  to  which  it  carried  the  mathematical  method  of 
analysis  in  heredity  problems  —  the  method  which,  outlined  in 
Hereditary  Genius  and  latterly  elaborated  by  the  biometricians, 
has  involved  its  followers  with  the  followers  of  Mendel  in  a 
spirited  and  possibly  momentous  controversy. 

1  Inquiries  into  Human  Faculty,  p.  24,  note. 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  305-307. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  327  ff.  *  Ibid.,  p.  337. 

5  Cf.  especially,  Sociological  Papers,  London,  1904,  p.  50,  and  1905,  pp.  52-53. 


144  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

A  reawakening  of  interest  in  eugenics  was  heralded,  on  the 
eve  of  the  present  century,  by  Professor  Karl  Pearson's  vigorous 
lecture  on  "  National  Life  from  the  Standpoint  of  Science,"  l  de- 
livered at  Newcastle,  November  19,  1900.  The  message  of  this 
lecture  was  primarily  the  answer  which  recent  studies  of  heredity 
had  given  to  those  who  concerned  themselves  with  problems  of 
national  welfare :  the  nation  is  an  organism  in  struggle  to  sur- 
vive, and  its  success  in  that  struggle  depends  on  the  strong  in- 
crease of  the  best  elements  of  its  population.  The  truth  was 
put  bluntly,  in  an  attempt  to  impress  it  upon  the  newly  sensitive 
minds  of  the  British  people,  aroused  at  that  time,  by  the  course 
of  events,  to  a  questioning  of  the  state  of  their  national  power. 

The  time,  indeed,  appears  to  have  been  unusually  favorable  to 
the  reception  and  spread  of  such  teachings.  The  shock  of  the 
reverses  in  South  Africa,  by  which,  throughout  England,  spirits 
"  were  depressed  in  a  manner  probably  never  before  experienced 
by  those  of  our  countrymen  now  living"2  was  "more  or  less 
directly"3  the  reason  for  Professor  Pearson's  choice  of  his  topic. 
"  I  have  endeavored  to  place  before  you  a  few  of  the  problems 
which,  it  seems  to  me,  arise  from  a  consideration  of  some  of  our 
recent  difficulties  in  war  and  in  trade."4  England,  in  manufac- 
ture and  commerce  as  in  war,  had  shown  "a  want  of  brains  in 
the  right  place."5  But  lack  of  physique  as  well  as  lack  of  brain 
was  causing  apprehension,  as  evidenced  later  by  the  appointment 
(September  2,  1903)  of  an  Inter-Departmental  Committee  on 
Physical  Deterioration  "to  make  a  preliminary  inquiry  into  the 
allegations  concerning  the  deterioration  of  certain  classes  of  the 
population  as  shown  by  the  large  percentage  of  rejections  for 
physical  causes  of  recruits  for  the  Army  and  by  other  evidence, 
especially  the  Report  of  the  Royal  Commission  on  Physical 
Training  (Scotland)  "  —which  had  been  created  the  year  before. 
Subsequently  the  Committee  was  further  instructed  "  to  indicate 
generally  the  causes  of  such  physical  deterioration  as  does  exist 

1  Part  of  this  now  famous  lecture  has  been  reprinted  in  Carver,  Sociology  and 
Social  Progress,  pp.  392-409.  (linn  and  Company,  1905. —  Ki>. 

2  National  Life  from  the  Standpoint  of  Science,  p.  9.    London,  1901. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  13.  4  Ibid.,  p.  60.  5  Ibid.,  p.  30. 


EUGENICS  145 

in  certain  classes,  .  .  .  and  to  point  out  the  means  by  which  it 
can  be  most  effectually  diminished."  Probably  the  public  had 
been  prepared  for  notions  of  degeneracy  in  some  parts  of  the 
population  by  the  epoch-making  investigations  of  Charles  Booth 
in  London  —  investigations  which  were  just  then  culminating,  after 
a  duration  of  more  than  a  decade.  Finally,  it  was  not  without 
significance  that  the  school  of  biologists  who  stood  for  quantita- 
tive studies  by  means  of  the  technique  of  modern  mathematical 
statistics,  and  among  whom  Galton  was  a  recognized  leader, 
signalized  their  growing  solidarity  and  influence  by  establishing 
in  October,  1901,  their  journal  Biometrika,  which,  from  the  time 
of  its  initial  number,  has  published  many  articles  bearing  more 
or  less  directly  upon  eugenics. 

In  this  same  month  of  October,  1901,  Galton  delivered  the 
Huxley  Lecture  of  the  Anthropological  Institute  of  Great  Britain 
and  Ireland,  and  returned  to  the  field  of  eugenics  by  taking  as 
his  subject  for  the  lecture  "The  Possible  Improvement  of  the 
Human  Breed,  under  the  Existing  Conditions  of  Law  and  Senti- 
ment." He  echoed  on  this  occasion  the  opinions  which  had 
marked  his  earlier  utterances,  putting  them,  however,  in  the 
mathematical  form  of  his  intervening,  work.  He  laid,  as  usual, 
special  stress  on  the  importance  of  increasing  the  productivity  of 
the  best  stock,  rather  than  repressing  the  worst ;  and  he  out- 
lined, conservatively,  possible  means  to  that  end,  in  economic  aid, 
honors,  and  a  sort  of  religious  enthusiasm.1 

Since  this  Huxley  Lecture,  partly  because  of  the  receptivity  of 
the  public  mind,  partly  no  doubt  through  the  collaboration  of 
able  scientists  in  allied  studies,  eugenics  has  made  progress. 
"  Now,"  wrote  Galton,  in  his  autobiography  (1908),  "  I  see  my 
way  better,  and  an  appreciative  audience  is  at  last  to  be  had, 
though  it  be  small."  To  this  audience  he  repeatedly  addressed 
himself :  the  extent  of  his  activity  during  his  last  ten  years  quite 
precludes  any  attempt  at  this  point  to  give  each  of  his  publications 
separate  mention.  Three  papers  only,  delivered  and  discussed  be- 
fore the  Sociological  Society,  are  chosen  for  special  comment  here. 

1  Nature,  Vol.  LXIV,  pp.  663-664  ;  also,  Annual  Report  of  the  Smithsonian 
Institution  for  1901,  p.  534. 


146  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

The  first  of  these  papers,  read  May  16,  1904,  bore  the  title : 
"  Eugenics  :  Its  Definition,  Scope,  and  Aims."  "  Eugenics,"  as 
then  defined,  "  is  the  science  which  deals  with  all  influences  that 
improve  the  inborn  qualities  of  a  race ;  also  with  those  that  de- 
velop them  to  the  utmost  advantage."1  But  in  what  followed,  as  in 
most  discussions  of  eugenics,  only  the  improvement  of  inborn  qual- 
ities was  considered.  "  The  aim  of  eugenics  is  to  bring  as  many 
influences  as  can  be  reasonably  employed,  to  cause  the  useful 
classes  in  the  community  to  contribute  more  than  their  proportion 
to  the  next  generation.2  To  the  question  thence  arising  —  what 
influences  can  be  reasonably  employed  ? — came  the  answer  which 
has  taken  rank  as  an  authoritative  scheme  of  eugenic  activity.3 

The  course  of  procedure  that  lies  within  the  functions  of  a  learned  and  active 
Society,  such  as  the  Sociological  may  become,  would  be  somewhat  as  follows : 

1 .  Dissemination  of  a  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  heredity  so  far  as  they  are 
surely  known,  and  promotion  of  their  farther  study.    Few  seem  to  be  aware 
how  greatly  the  knowledge  of  what  may  be  termed  the  actuarial  side  of  hered- 
ity has  advanced  in  recent  years.  .  .  . 

2.  Historical  inquiry  into  the  rates  with  which  the  various  classes  of  society 
(classified  according  to  civic  usefulness)4  have  contributed  to  the  population  at 
various  times,  in  ancient  and  modern  nations.    There  is  strong  reason  for 
believing  that  national  rise  and  decline  is  closely  connected  with  this  influence. 
It  seems  to  be  the  tendency  of  high  civilization  to  check  fertility  in  the  upper 
classes,  through  numerous  causes,  some  of  which  are  well  known,  others  are 
inferred,  and  others  again  are  wholly  obscure.  .  .  .6 

3.  Systematic  collection  of  facts  showing  the  circumstances  under  which 
large  and  thriving  families  have  most  frequently  originated;  in  other  words, 
the  conditions  of  Eugenics.6  .  .  . 

1  Sociological  Papers,  1904,  p.  45.  2  Ibid.,  p.  47.  3  Ibid.,  pp.  47-50. 

*  Galton  was  careful,  and  for  the  most  part  more  than  ordinarily  successful,  in 
maintaining  the  distinction  between  superior  classes  in  a  eugenic  sense  and  the 
conventional  "  upper  classes  "  whose  position  is  a  matter  of  wealth  or  social  pre- 
tensions. But  the  distinction  is  difficult  to  keep  clear.  For  example,  Galton's 
assumption  that  ability  is  satisfactorily  measured  by  attainment  would  in  many 
cases  identify  ability  with  the  possession  of  wealth  or  station.  [Cf.  Loria,  "The 
Psycho-Physical  Elite  and  the  Economic  Elite,"  pp.  167-173  of  this  volume.  —  ED.] 

5  "  The  latter  class  are  apparently  analogous  to  those  which  bar  the  fertility  of 
most  species  of  wild  animals  in  zoological  gardens."  —  Sociological  Papers,  1904,  p.  48. 

6  A  thriving  family,  tentatively  denned,  "  is  one  in  which  the  children  have 
gained  distinctly  superior  positions  to  those  who  were  their  classmates  in  early 
life.    Families  may  be  considered  '  large  '  that  contain  not  less  than  three  adult 
male  children." — Sociological  Papers,  1904,  p.  48. 


EUGENICS  147 

4.  Influences  affecting  Marriage  [i.e.,  the  influences  of  social  sanction  or 
disapproval,  which  might  be  turned  to  the  service  of  eugenics].  .  .  . 

5.  Persistence  in  setting  forth  the  national  importance  of  Eugenics.    There 
are  three  stages  to  be  passed  through.    Firstly  it  must  be  made  familiar  as  an 
academic  question,  until  its  exact  importance  has  been  understood  and  accepted 
as  a  fact ;  Secondly  it  must  be  recognized  as  a  subject  whose  practical  devel- 
opment deserves  serious  consideration ;   and   Tliirdly  it  must  be  introduced 
into  the  national  conscience,  like  a  new  religion.  ...    I  see  no  impossibility  in 
Eugenics  becoming  a  religious  dogma  among  mankind,  but  its  details  must  first 
be  worked  out  sedulously  in  the  study.    Over-zeal  leading  to  hasty  action  would 
do  harm.  .  .  .    The  first  and  main  point  is  to  secure  the  general  intellectual 
acceptance  of  Eugenics  as  a  hopeful  and  most  important  study.    Then  let  its 
principles  work  into  the  heart  of  the  nation,  who  will  gradually  give  practical 
effect  to  them  in  ways  that  we  may  not  wholly  foresee. 

After  nearly  a  year l  Galton  again  addressed  the  Sociological 
Society ;  not,  as  before,  to  outline  a  eugenic  system,  but  rather, 
in  the  light  of  his  maturer  reflection,  to  revise  the  former  em- 
phasis and  to  suggest  paths  of  further  work.  Under  the  title  of 
"  Studies  in  National  Eugenics,"  in  indicating  some  of  the  work 
to  be  done,  he  touched  newly  on  an  old  project : 

In  some  future  time,  dependent  on  circumstances,  I  look  forward  to  a  suitable 
authority  issuing  Eugenic  certificates  to  candidates  for  them.  They  would 
imply  a  more  than  an  [sic]  average  share  of  the  several  qualities  of  at  least 
goodness  of  constitution,  of  physique,  and  of  mental  capacity.2 

But  the  idea  to  which  he  gave  most  prominence,  and  which 
received  most  attention  during  the  discussion,  was  that  of  "  Re- 
strictions in  Marriage."3  By  all  sorts  of  folk  customs,  marriage 
relations  throughout  the  world  are  restricted  and  controlled  as 
social  expediency  directs.  Monogamy,  endogamy,  exogamy,  the 
Australian  marriage  usages,  taboo,  the  prohibited  degrees,  celibacy 
—  all  demonstrate  ' '  how  powerful  are  the  various  combinations 
of  immaterial  motives  upon  marriage  selection,  how  they  may  all 
become  hallowed  by  religion,  accepted  as  custom,  and  enforced  by 
law."  4  "  The  proverbial  '  Mrs.  Grundy  '  has  enormous  influence  in 
checking  the  marriages  she  considers  indiscreet."  6  As  for  the 

1  February  14,  1905.  3  Ibid.,  pp.  3-13. 

2  Sociological  Papers,  1905,  p.  17.  4  Ibid.,  p.  12. 

5  Ibid.,  p.  51.  This  remark,  from  Galton's  reply  to  criticism,  was  apparently 
written  after  the  original  session. 


148  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

religious  sanction,  Galton  was  moved  by  the  discussion  to  append 
in  the  published  report  a  specific  note  on  "  Eugenics  as  a  Factor 
in  Religion."  1  Thus  the  imperiousness  of  social  convention  and 
the  moral  enthusiasm  of  religious  belief,  two  motives  that  are 
always  with  us,  are  given  emphatic  recognition  as  potential  forces 
of  great  promise  for  eugenic  reform. 

With  these  parting  instructions  and  renewed  expressions  of 
hopefulness,  Galton 's  active  efforts  for  eugenics  may  be  said  to 
have  ended.  Almost  until  his  death,  which  occurred  January  17, 
1911,  he  continued  to  lend  the  cause  the  support  of  his  steady 
interest ;  and  on  one  or  two  occasions  he  consented  to  speak  in 
public,  despite  his  advanced  age  of  nearly  ninety  years.  But  his 
main  work  was  done.  He  had  been  given  the  rare  experience  of 
foreseeing  and  announcing  a  new  branch  of  knowledge  in  advance 
of  his  generation,  and  yet,  though  he  had  made  his  announce- 
ment in  middle  age,  of  living  to  see  a  subsequent  generation  over- 
take his  idea  and  gratefully  adopt  it.  He  created  eugenics,  named 
it,  and  formally  defined  it,  as  "  the  study  of  agencies  under  social 
control  that  may  improve  or  impair  the  racial  qualities  of  future 
generations,  either  physically  or  mentally.2  By  his  own  achieve- 
ments, by  the  kindling  influence  of  his  enthusiasm,  and  by  the 
final  gift  of  his  main  fortune,  he  has  insured  that  the  science  he 
founded  shall  go  on. 

Of  the  recent  developments  in  eugenic  research,  that  which 
most  closely  links  itself  with  Galton's  inquiries  is  the  work  of 
Professor  Karl  Pearson  and  his  associates.  By  profession  Pearson 
is  a  mathematician.  Since  1896  he  has  occupied  the  chair  of 
Applied  Mathematics  and  Mechanics  at  University  College,  Lon- 
don. But  an  interest  in  philosophical  problems  and  especially  in 
the  theory  of  evolution  turned  his  attention  to  the  mathematical 
aspects  of  various  biological  phenomena,3  and,  not  surprisingly,  to 

1  Sociological  Papers,  1905,  pp.  52-53. 

2  Memories  of  My  Life,  p.  321.    A  later  definition  will  be  found  in  the  form  of 
a  note  to  page  3  of  Sociological  Papers,  1905  :   "  Kugcnics  may  be  denned  as  the 
science  which  deals  with  those  social  agencies  that  influence,  mentally  or  physi- 
cally, the  racial  qualities  of  future  generations." 

3  For  early  examples  of  Pearson's  work  in  such  subjects,  cf.  The  Chances  of 
Death  and  Other  Studies  in  Evolution  (1897) ;  especially  Vol.  I. 


EUGENICS  149 

the  methods  of  study  which  Galton's  'Natural  Inheritance  had  pro- 
posed. In  a  series  of  Mathematical  Contributions  to  the  Theory 
of  Evolution  he  considered  and  revised  the  Galtonian  Law  of 
Ancestral  Heredity,  and  greatly  elaborated  the  theory  of  frequency 
curves  and  correlation  methods,  extending  their  applications  to 
cases  where  the  impossibility  of  exact  quantitative  measurement 
had  previously  made  them  inapplicable,  and  devising  safeguards 
against  biased  errors  in  observation.  Then,  with  the  new  refine- 
ments of  this  "  biometric  "  metho'd  at  his  command,  he  proceeded 
to  an  estimate  of  the  influence  of  heredity  on  human  traits.  Pre- 
liminary investigation  of  the  inheritance  of  certain  tangible  char- 
acters of  animals  had  provided  a  measure  of  the  degree  in  which 
such  characters  are  inherited,  expressed  in  correlation  coefficients 
indicating  the  resemblance  between  parent  and  progeny,  or  be- 
tween two  individuals  of  common  parentage.  In  the  first  of  two 
articles,  published  in  1903,  "  On  the  Laws  of  Inheritance  in 
Man,"  *  Professor  Pearson  concluded  that  the  inheritance  of  phys- 
ical characters  in  man  is  more  marked  than  had  been  supposed  : 
is  in  fact  as  strong  as  in  other  animals.  More  impressive  still 
was  the  conclusion  of  the  second  article,  dealing  with  mental  and 
moral  qualities,  and  showing  them  to  be  inherited  in  the  same 
degree  as  physical  traits.  To  be  sure,  the  subject  of  this  study 
offered  peculiar  difficulties  ;  and  the  method  adopted  —  a  study 
of  fraternal  .resemblance  as  evidenced  by  the  reports  of  school- 
teachers —  is  open  to  serious  question  on  grounds  of  bias  in  the 
collection  of  the  data.  Yet,  after  allowance  for  fallacy  and  error, 
the  result  of  the  inquiry  remained  too  striking  to  be  longer 
ignored,  and  still  further  shifted  the  burden  of  proof  toward  those 
who  denied  the  transmissibility  of  mental  endowments. 

Eugenic  investigation  took  on  added  definiteness  about  a  year 
after  the  publication  of  these  papers,  through  the  generous  inter- 
est of  Francis  Galton,  who  gave  to  the  University  of  London 
funds  to  maintain  a  fellowship  for  the  promotion  of  the  study 
of  "national  eugenics."  From  The  Francis  Galton  Laboratory 
for  National  Eugenics  then  organized  has  come  an  increasing  out- 
put of  interesting  and  often  important  studies.  In  1911  the  will 

1  Biometrika,  Vol.  II,  pp.  357-462,  and  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  131-190. 


150  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  Sir  Francis  Gallon  bequeathed  some  ,£45,000  to  the  Univer- 
sity of  London  "  for  the  establishment  and  endowment  of  a  profes- 
sorship—  to  be  known  as  'The  Gallon  Professorship  of  Eugenics,' 
with  a  laboratory  or  office  and  library  attached  thereto."  The  will 
further  makes  this  statement  of  what  the  Gallon  professor  is  to  do : 

1 .  Collect  materials  bearing  on  Eugenics. 

2.  Discuss  such  materials  and  draw  conclusions. 

3.  Form  a  Central  Office  to  provide  information,  under  appropriate  restric- 
tions, to  private  individuals  and  to  public  authorities  concerning  the  laws  of 
inheritance  in  man,  and  to  urge  the  conclusions  as  to  social  conduct  which 
follow  from  such  laws. 

4.  Extend  the  knowledge  of  Eugenics  by  all  or  any  of  the  following  means, 
namely  : — (a)  professorial  instruction  :  (b)  occasional  publications  ;  (c)  occasional 
public  lectures ;  (d)  experimental  or  observational  work  which  may  throw  light 
on  eugenic  problems. 

In  accordance  with  the  founder's  wish,  Pearson  has  been  chosen 
as  the  first  Gallon  Professor. 

The  publications  of  the  Eugenics  Laboratory  are  for  Ihe  most 
part  comprised  in  two  series  :  The  Eugenics  Laboratory  Memoirs 
and  Ihe  Eugenics  Laboratory  Leclure  Series.  A  Ihird  series, 
nominally  dislincl,  —  the  Studies  in  National  Deterioration,  pub- 
lished as  Drapers'  Company  Research  Memoirs  by  Ihe  Depart- 
ment of  Applied  Mathemalics  of  University  College  —  presenls 
Ihe  resulls  of  similar  inquiries  conducted  in  Ihe  Biomelric  Labo- 
ratory, often  by  members  of  Ihe  Eugenics  Laboralory  Staff.  Yel 
anolher  series,  Queslions  of  Ihe  Day  and  of  Ihe  Fray,  also  pub- 
lished by  Ihe  Departmenl  of  Applied  Mathematics,  has  been 
inaugurated.  However,  a  more  intelligible  slalemenl  of  whal  has 
been  accomplished  can  be  made  if  Ihe  publications  be  for  Ihe 
momenl  regarded  as  falling  into  Ihree  groups,  namely:  (i)  com- 
pilalions  of  mere  material  for  Ihe  sludy  of  human  inheritance  ; 
(2)  intensive  and  technical  sludies  of  special  eugenic  problems  ; 
and  (3)  general  slalemenls  of  Ihe  conclusions  reached,  in  simple 
form  for  popular  informalion. 

The  firsl  group  consisls  of  Ihose  issues  of  Ihe  Eugenics 
Memoirs  which  arc  known  colleclively  as  The  Treasury  of  Human 
Inheritance.  These  are  designed  to  make  available,  in  standard- 
ized, scienlific  form,  wilhoul  attempt  at  interpretalion  or  anylhing 


EUGENICS  151 

controversial,  "  published  and  unpublished  family  pedigrees,  illus- 
trating the  inheritance  in  man  of  mental  and  physical  characters, 
of  disease  and  of  abnormality."  The  parts  thus  far  issued  contain 
pedigrees  of  diabetes  insipidus,  split-foot,  polydactylism,  brachy^ 
dactylism,  tuberculosis,  deaf-mutism,  legal  ability,  angioneurotic 
oedema,  hermaphroditism,  insanity,  commercial  ability,  harelip, 
cleft  palate,  and  congenital  cataract.  The  evidence  thus  gathered 
affords  important  data,  not  only  for  followers  of  the  Galton- 
Pearson  school,  but  for  all  who  perceive  that  the  progress  of 
eugenics  depends  on  a  further  knowledge  of  the  facts. 

The  second  group  —  detailed  reports  of  special  studies  —  com- 
prises most  of  the  Eugenics  Memoirs,  and  the  Studies  in  National 
Deterioration.  Here,  perhaps,  should  also  be  placed  the  Ques- 
tions of  the  Day  and  of  the  Fray,  which  up  to  the  present  have 
mainly  served  to  carry  on  a  controversy  that  recent  memoirs  on 
the  influence  of  parental  alcoholism  provoked.  Apart  from  these 
polemics,  fourteen  l  Memoirs  and  Studies  have  appeared,  dealing 
with  such  subjects,  among  others,  as  tuberculosis,  insanity,  the 
inheritance  of  the  phthisical  and  insane  diatheses,  the  relative 
effect  of  heredity  and  environment  on  eyesight,  the  effect  of 
home  conditions  on  the  physique  and  intelligence  of  children,  and 
the  inheritance  of  ability. 

The  third  group  is  coincident  with  the  Eugenics  Laboratory 
Lecture  Series.  To  persons  who  wish  to  learn  the  gist  of  the 
results  embodied  in  the  more  abstruse  memoirs,  but  who  are  not 
so  critical-minded  or  so  mathematically  trained  as  to  grapple  with 
their  technicalities,  these  lectures  carry  the  message  of  the  Labo- 
ratory on  the  paramount  import  of  heredity  in  human  improve- 
ment or  degeneration.  "  All  human  qualities  are  inherited  in  a 
marked  and  probably  equal  degree."2  Sweepingly  this  is  enun- 
ciated, as  a  foundation  principle  of  eugenics  ;  "  good  and  bad  phy- 
sique, the  liability  to  and  the  immunity  from  disease,  the  moral 
characters  and  the  mental  temperament"3 — -all,  so  far  as  they 

1  Twenty-two  at  the  end  of  1915.  —  En. 

2  Pearson,  The  Groundwork  of  Eugenics,  p.  20. 

3  Pearson,  The  Scope  and  Importance  to  the  State  of  the  Science  of  National 
Eugenics,  p.  33. 


152  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

are  not  acquired  characters,  are  included  in  the  claim.  Environ- 
mental factors,  on  the  contrary,  exert  an  influence  of  altogether 
subordinate  importance  : 

I  will  not  dogmatically  assert  that  environment  matters  not  at  all ;  phases  of  it 
may  be  discovered  which  produce  more  effect  than  any  we  have  yet  been  able 
to  deal  with.  But  I  think  it  quite  safe  to  say  that  the  influence  of  environment 
is  not  one  fifth  that  of  heredity,  and  quite  possibly  not  one  tenth  of  it.1 

Hence,  clearly,  attempts  at  the  alleviation  or  cure  of  human  dis- 
abilities should  look  much  more  to  human  nature  and  much  less 
to  the  external  conditions  of  the  milieu  than  has  been  usual ;  and 
should  especially  beware  of  such  changes  in  law  or  social  custom 
as,  by  slackening  or  perverting  biological  selection,  more  than 
undo  the  direct  benefits  they  have  sought  to  accomplish.  Hence, 
too,  that  notoriously  adverse  selection  due  to  the  restricted  birth 
rate  fundamentally  menaces  the  racial  quality  of  the  future ;  the 
more  particularly  since  researches  have  shown  that  the  neurotic, 
the  insane,  the  tuberculous,  and  the  criminal  are  more  frequent 
among  the  elder-born  members  of  families,  and  thus  constitute 
an  abnormally  large  proportion  of  the  descendants  of  persons  who 
have  had  exceptionally  small  families.2  The  advance  of  the  science 
of  medicine  and  the  spread  of  education  could  make  but  poor 
headway  against  a  steady  running-out  of  the  stock  which  they 
are  called  on  to  restore. 

The  philanthropist  looks  to  hygiene,  to  education,  to  general  environment,  for 
the  preservation  of  the  race.  It  is  the  easy  path,  but  it  cannot  achieve  the 
desired  result.  These  things  are  needful  tools  to  the  efficient,  and  passable 
crutches  to  the  halt ;  but  .  .  .  there  is  no  hope  of  racial  purification  in  any 
environment  which  does  not  mean  selection  of  the  germ.3  .  .  .  Selection  of 
parentage  is  the  sole  effective  process  known  to  science  by  which  a  race  can 
continually  progress.4 

The  conclusions  announced  by  the  Galton  Laboratory  have  fre- 
quently been  called  in  question.  Authoritative  biological  opinion, 

1  Pearson,  Nature  and  Nurture,  p.  27. 

-  Cf.  Pearson,  The  Problem  of  Practical  Eugenics,  p.  19.  [This  conclusion,  like 
others  of  the  Pearson  school,  has  been  seriously  questioned  by  a  number  of  statis- 
ticians and  medical  men.  It  cannot  as  yet  lie  considered  as  scientifically  estab- 
lished.—  En.]  3  The  Scope  and  Importance  ...  of  National  Eugenics,  p.  39. 

4  The  Groundwork  of  Eugenics,  p.  20. 


EUGENICS  153 

supported  by  quite  different  methods  of  research,  has,  to  be  sure, 
agreed  in  assigning  much  greater  weight  to  heredity  than  to  sur- 
rounding conditions.  But  the  findings  of  Professor  Pearson  and 
his  collaborators  have  challenged  prevalent  opinion  so  often  as  to 
plunge  the  authors  in  controversy.  In  particular,  the  studies  deal- 
ing with  the  effects  of  parental  alcoholism  upon  children  have 
provoked  much  hostile  comment.  Obviously,  the  assertion  that 
no  marked  influence  on  the  physique  and  mentality  of  the  child 
is  produced  by  alcoholism  of  the  parents  discredits  much  of  the 
best-meant  effort  now  devoted  to  social  betterment,  and  seems 
nothing  less  than  high  treason  to  the  zealots  of  the  temperance 
cause.  Sentimental  protest  against  such  a  finding  was  inevitable. 
In  this  instance  the  temper  of  the  protests  had  doubtless  been 
exacerbated  by  irritation  at  the  mathematical  treatment  which 
characterizes  all  the  work  of  the  Eugenics  Laboratory,  and  makes 
the  published  results  nearly  or  quite  unintelligible  to  persons 
unfamiliar  with  the  manner  of  analysis  and  statement  there  em- 
ployed. The  criticism  which  results  from  prejudice  and  mis- 
understanding is,  of  course,  negligible.  There  remains,  however, 
a  valid  ground  for  objection  to  the  assumptions  of  the  actuarial 
method  in  itself.  To  make  this  more  clear  it  will  be  necessary 
to  outline  a  different  interpretation  of  the  phenomena  of  heredity, 
for  purposes  of  comparison. 

According  to  the  Mendelian  school,  a  cardinal  principle  of 
heredity  is  to  be  recognized  in  the  segregation  of  alternative 
characters.  The  effect  of  this  principle  is  that  the  so-called  unit 
characters  are,  in  heredity,  indivisible.  A  given  unit  character 
either  appears  completely  or  wholly  fails  to  appear  in  the  bodily 
make-up  of  an  individual.  Thus,  for  example,  either  a  man  is 
color-blind  or  he  is  not,  much  as  a  person  is  either  male  or  female. 
In  so  far  as  inheritance  is  in  this  way  alternative  the  intermediate 
blending  of  unit  characteristics  is  precluded.  The  disciple  of 
Mendel  therefore  conducts  his  investigations  "  in  such  a  way  that 
the  only  possible  answer  is  a  direct  '  Yes  '  or  a  direct  '  No.'  "  l 

The  "actuarial"  study  of  heredity,  on  the  other  hand,  rests  on 
an  altogether  different  assumption.  The  Galtonian  analysis,  and 
1  \V.  Hateson,  The  Methods  and  Scope  of  Genetics,  p.  20. 


154  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  formulae  of  Professor  Pearson  which  have  developed  and 
emended  it,  are  based  on  the  view  that  the  traits  of  an  individual 
are  not  alternative  unit  characters,  but  variations  of  greater  or  less 
degree  in  either  direction  from  an  intermediate  normal  type  ;  and 
that,  if  a  large  number  of  cases  be  studied  together,  the  distribu- 
tion of  observed  variations  about  the  mean  will  exemplify  the 
"  normal  frequency  "  computed  according  to  the  theory  of  proba- 
bilities. Consequently  the  investigator  at  the  Galton  Laboratory 
does  not  ask  questions  to  be  answered  by  "yes"  or  "  no."  He 
asks,  "to  what  extent?"  and  expresses  his  answer  numerically 
in  a  coefficient  of  correlation. 

Theoretically,  then,  if  the  Mendelian  formulation  is  right,  the 
actuarial  method  is  wrong.  Between  two  alternative  unit  charac- 
ters a  mean,  in  the  sense  of  an  actual  intermediate  type,  does  not 
exist.  In  such  a  case  the  biometricians'  concept  of  deviations 
from  the  normal  has  no  justification  in  fact.  If  proof  of  the  in- 
compatibility of  the  two  interpretations  were  needed,  it  might  be 
found  in  the  reluctance  of  Professor  Pearson  to  accept  the  almost 
conclusive  evidence  adduced  by  experimenters  of  the  other  school. 
In  practice,  to  be  sure,  the  actuarial  procedure  may  yield  results 
broadly  corresponding  to  the  conclusions  of  the  Mendelians ; 
especially  where  the  mass  of  data  is  large  or  the  characters  studied, 
being  in  reality  complex  groups  of  undistinguished  unit  characters, 
yield  collective  results  which  partake  of  the  nature  of  averages. 
But  correlation  methods  afford  at  best  a  blind  and  clumsy  way  of 
dealing  with  unit  characters.  If  the  unit-character  theory  con- 
tinues to  gain  ascendancy,  as  now  seems  likely,  the  authority  of 
the  biometricians  will  decline,  and  the  value  of  the  publications 
which  have  thus  far  issued  from  the  Galton  Laboratory  will 
decline  with  it.  Yet  even  though  the  actuarial  method  be  sup- 
planted, it  will  have  served  a  useful  purpose  by  its  example  of 
quantitative  work,  inadequately  conceived  but  rigorously  carried 
out,  at  a  time  when  the  scientific  pretensions  of  eugenics  had 
still  to  be  established. 

Hardly  more  than  a  decade  has  yet  elapsed  since  the  redis- 
covery of  Mendel's  writings  gave  a  new  impulse  to  the  experi- 
mental study  of  heredity.  In  the  course  of  the  search  for  fresh 


EUGENICS  155 

biological  testimony  in  support  of  Mendel's  views  not  a  little 
evidence  has  been  derived  from  inquiries  into  the  transmission 
of  human  traits.  The  general  literature  of  Mendelism  has  given 
some  attention  to  unit-character  inheritance  in  man.  But  thus  far 
the  task  of  systematic  eugenic  investigation  based  on  Mendelian 
principles  has  been  largely  left  to  American  scientists. 

Although  the  eugenics  movement,  under  that  name,  is  but  a 
newcomer  in  America,  the  course  of  our  earlier  thinking  and 
writing  on  social  problems  was  not  without  its  significant  contri- 
butions to  the  subject  of  race  improvement.  The  investigations 
of  hereditary  criminality  carried  on  by  Robert  L.  Dugdale,  in 
1874  and  1875,  and  summarized  in  his  world-famous  little  book, 
The  Jukes ,l  must  rank  among  the  most  fruitful  studies  of  degen- 
eracy which  have  yet  been  made.  Later,  McCulloch's  Tribe  of 
Ishmael  assembled  more  evidence  of  similar  purport.  Dr.  Amos 
Warner's  illuminating  chapter  on  Charity  as  a  Factor  in  Human 
Selection,  published  in  his  American  Charities  nearly  twenty 
years  ago,  dates  back  to  a  period  when,  in  his  own  words,  there 
was  "almost  no  literature  bearing  directly  on  the  subject."  Since 
then  the  debt  of  eugenics  to  scientific  philanthropy  in  the  United 
States  has  continued  to  grow.  The  proceedings  of  the  National 
Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction  and  of  the  American 
Prison  Association  have  contained,  from  the  times  of  Dugdale 
and  McCulloch  and  Warner  to  the  present  day,  interesting  evi- 
dences of  human  heredity.  Another  branch  of  inquiry  has  sprung 
from  the  suggestion  of  Dr.  Alexander  Graham  Bell's  Memoir 
upon  tJic  Formation  of  a  Deaf  Variety  of  the  Human  Race 
(1883),  which  was  followed  by  Dr.  Fay's  exhaustive  work  on 
Marriages  of  tJic  Deaf  in  America,  and  supported  by  Dr.  Bell's 
endowment  of  the  Volta  Bureau,  at  Washington,  for  the  collection 
of  information  concerning  deaf-mutes.  From  biological  begin- 
nings, revealed  in  a  chapter  or  two  of  Footnotes  to  Evolution, 
Dr.  David  Starr  Jordan  developed  the  eugenic  message  of  The 

1  4th  edition,  1910.  Comparable  to  "The  Jukes"  are  two  monographs  pub- 
lished by  the  Eugenics  Record  Office:  The  Nam  Family,  1912,  and  The  Hill 
Folk,  1912.  —  ED. 


156  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Blood  of  the  Nation  and  The  Human  Han>cst.  Latterly,  Dr. 
Woods,  in  his  Mental  and  Moral  Heredity  in  Royalty,  has 
produced  a  valuable  book  after  the  manner  of  Gallon's  earlier 
studies.  On  the  other  side,  Professor  Ward's  Applied  Sociology, 
weaving  its  author's  social  philosophy  and  the  conclusions  of 
Alfred  Odin's  Gcncsc  dcs  grands  Jiommcs  into  a  remarkable  pro- 
test against  the  physical  determinism  of  heredity  as  expressed  in 
Galton's  work,  glowingly  affirms  the  power  of  society  to  develop 
latent  genius  by  the  fostering  social  environment  of  education. 
Such  are  a  few  conspicuous  examples  of  pioneer  eugenic  thought 
in  this  country.  With  them  should  be  mentioned  the  little-known 
project  of  Mr.  Loring  Moody,  of  Boston,  who,  in  1881  or  1882, 
proposed  to  establish  an  Institute  of  Heredity,  and,  by  means  of 
a  school  with  lectures  and  a  library,  to  diffuse  "  knowledge  on  the 
subject  of  improving  our  race  by  the  laws  of  physiology."  1  This 
plan,  however,  was  frustrated  by  Mr.  Moody's  death,  and  the 
organized  dissemination  of  eugenic  instruction  which  it  contem- 
plated long  remained  unrealized. 

A  new  phase  of  eugenics  in  this  country  began  in  1906  with 
the  appointment  of  the  Committee  on  Eugenics  of  the  American 
Breeders'  Association.2  The  latter  society  had  been  formed  in 
1903,  by  scientific  breeders  of  animals  and  plants,  to  promote  the 
study  of  heredity  in  its  bearings  upon  their  methods.  When, 
with  the  purpose  of  organizing  this  study,  the  Association  deter- 
mined to  appoint  a  comprehensive  system  of  committees,  it 
recognized  the  applications  of  heredity  to  human  well-being  by 
naming  a  Committee  on  Eugenics.  Some  persons,  to  be  sure, 
felt  at  that  time  that  a  wholly  independent  organization  would  be 
more  appropriate.  The  American  Breeders'  Association  conse- 
quently authorized  its  eugenics  committee  to  sever  itself  from  the 
parent  society  if  that  course  should  be  deemed  best.  But  the 
opinion  prevailed  that  the  serious  study  of  human  heredity  would 
be  promoted  by  close  alliance  with  investigators  in  related  fields  ; 
and  that  in  so  far  as  sentimental  adherents  might  be  frightened 
away  by  distaste  for  so  frank  an  analogy  between  the  breeding  of 

1  The  details  of  this  project  have  been  communicated  to  the  Eugenics  Record 
Office.  •  Now  the  American  Genetic  Association. —  Ki>. 


EUGENICS  157 

men  and  the  breeding  of  cattle,  the  effect  on  the  ultimate  use- 
fulness of  the  committee  would  be  more  salutary  than  otherwise. 
Accordingly,  for  three  or  four  years  the  Committee  on  Eugenics 
continued  to  exist,  with  a  growing  membership  and  a  slowly  wid- 
ening sphere  of  activity.  Then,  in  July,  1910,  it  was  raised  to 
the  rank  of  Eugenics  Section,  coordinate  with  the  Plant  Section 
and  Animal  Section  of  the  original  constitution,  and  permitted 
to  form  committees  of  its  own.  The  committees  at  present  organ- 
ized are  concerned  with  the  heredity,  respectively,  of  the  feeble- 
minded, of  insanity,  of  epilepsy,  of  criminality,  and  of  deaf -mutism. 
Each  committee  has  its  chairman  and  its  secretary,  experts  in  the 
special  subject.  The  chairman  of  the  Eugenics  Section  as  a 
whole  is  David  Starr  Jordan  ;  and  the  secretary  is  Dr.  Charles  B. 
Davenport,  director  of  the  Department  of  Experimental  Evolution 
of  the  Carnegie  Institution,  at  Cold  Spring  Harbor,  Long  Island, 
where  the  work  of  the  section  virtually  centered  until  the  Eugenics 
Record  Office  was  founded  in  order  more  definitely  to  centralize 
and  supplement  the  activities  of  the  several  committees. 

The  Eugenics  Record  Office  was  opened  in  October,  1910, 
in  a  building  of  its  own  at  Cold  Spring  Harbor,  on  land  adjoin- 
ing the  experiment  station  of  the  Carnegie  Institution.  This 
proximity  permits  of  close  touch  between  the  investigators  of 
human  inheritance  and  the  biological  experimenters,  and  makes 
it  possible  for  Dr.  Davenport  to  direct  the  work  of  both.  But 
the  Record  Office  is  none  the  less  distinct,  as  it  is  maintained 
by  special  funds  from  contributors  interested  in  the  cause,  and 
manned  by  its  own  staff. 

The  main  work  of  the  Record  Office  is  the  collection  of  family 
pedigrees  revealing  the  presence  of  some  trait  or  defect  the  inheri- 
tance of  which  is  to  be  studied.  Inasmuch  as  these  pedigrees  are 
analyzed  not  in  masses  and  by  averages,  but  individually  accord- 
ing to  Mendelian  principles  of  descent,  it  is  important  that  each 
should,  if  practicable,  comprise  the  history  of  a  wide  family  con- 
nection through  several  generations,  with  all  possible  detail  that 
might  bear  on  the  subject  of  inquiry.  The  data  for  such  compila- 
tions are  secured  partly  by  correspondence,  in  the  form  of  stand- 
ardized "  Records  of  Family  Traits,"  and  partly  through  the  field 


158  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

workers  of  the  Record  Office  or  of  cooperating  hospitals,  asylums, 
and  other  institutions.  Once  secured,  the  material  is  recorded  in 
genealogical  charts,  with  the  aid  of  conventional  symbols  showing 
at  a  glance  not  only  degrees  of  relationship,  but  also  legitimacy ; 
sex  ;  cause  of  death  ;  bad  habits, 'diseases,  or  defects  such  as  alco- 
holism, habitual  wandering,  criminality,  sexual  immorality,  tuber- 
culosis, syphilis,  epilepsy,  feeble-mindedness,  insanity,  paralysis, 
neurotic  condition,  deafness,  blindness ;  or,  if  the  information 
establishes  it,  normality.  The  completed  records  are  kept  on  file 
in  a  fireproof  room  at  Cold  Spring  Harbor,  and  made  particularly 
accessible  by  an  elaborate  system  of  catalogue  references  to 
families,  localities,  characteristics,  and  the  like.  As  evidence 
accumulates  it  is  published  in  the  form  of  Eugenic  Record  Office 
Bulletins,  Memoirs,  and  Reports. 

Thus  far  the  researches  of  the  Record  Office  have  centered 
mainly  about  the  heredity  of  mental  disease  and  deficiency.  The 
field  workers  have  delved  in  the  family  histories  of  certain  iso- 
lated, inbred,  and  degenerate  communities  in  New  York  and 
New  England.  The  striking  lesson  which  these  inquiries  already 
foreshadow  is  not  all  that  is  gained.  During  the  summer  months 
the  staff  of  the  Record  Office  directs  the  training  of  a  class  in 
eugenic  field  work,  conducting  its  students  through  isolated  dis- 
tricts where  the  feeble-minded  are  found  living  in  hovels,  and 
more  particularly  through  establishments  for  the  insane  and  feeble- 
minded. There  the  students,  confronted  with  patients  and  histories 
of  patients,  see  with  their  own  eyes  a  telling  demonstration  of 
the  cost,  in  misery  and  care,  caused  by  the  breeding  of  tainted 
stocks.  More  than  that,  the  students  and  their  methods  are  them- 
selves seen  by  the  persons  in  charge  of  hospitals  and  asylums,  who 
are  thus  often  convinced  of  the  value,  for  their  own  purposes  and 
for  the  public  good,  of  such  a  tracing  back  of  the  ailments  which 
they  treat.  The  directors  of  the  Eugenics  Record  Office  have 
met  with  hearty  cooperation  at  such  institutions  ;  and  it  is  most 
gratifying  to  hear  that  more  than  one  State  has  taken  steps  to 
support  in  some  measure  the  scientific  economy  of  an  investiga- 
tion which  may  lead  to  a  momentous  reduction  of  the  burden  of 
caring  for  the  mentally  unsound. 

v 


EUGENICS  159 

The  practical  application  of  eugenic  principles  lies  mostly  in  the 
future,  when  there  shall  be  more  certain  kriowledge  of  the  true 
principles  to  apply.  But  in  the  meantime,  as  knowledge  grows, 
opportunity  is  given  at  least  for  partial  and  temporary  remedial 
measures,  to  check  the  apparent  degenerative  tendencies  that  con- 
temporary economic  and  social  conditions  create.  Moreover,  if  an 
ultimate  policy  of  race  improvement  is  to  be  elaborated,  there  must 
be  a  working  hypothesis  of  the  task  to  be  accomplished.  For  both 
these  reasons  eugenists  must  look  toward  the  problem  of  practical 
eugenic  procedure,  and  consider  in  particular,  though  it  be  only 
provisionally,  the  distinction  between  positive  and  negative,  or,  in 
the  happier  terms  of  Mr.  Crackanthorpe,  constructive  and  restric- 
tive, eugenics.1  Is  the  eugenic  ideal  more  attainable  by  promoting 
the  increase  of  superior  stock  and  thus  cultivating  high  ability, 
or  by  checking  the  propagation  of  the  inferior,  and  so  eliminating 
the  congenitally  unfit  ? 

It  has  been  maintained  that  positive  and  negative  eugenics  are 
one  and  the  same  process,  viewed  from  opposite  sides  :  that  the 
relative  increase  of  the  better  is  the  relative  decrease  of  the  worse. 
However  true  this  may  be  as  an  abstraction,  it  is  not  necessarily 
so  significant  in  its  application  to  actual  conditions.  We  cannot 
divide  all  of  mankind  sharply  into  sheep  and  goats  and  deal  with 
either  half  in  its  entirety.  Practically,  eugenics  is  likely  always 
to  have  to  concentrate  its  efforts  on  the  comparatively  few  who 
are  manifestly  good  or  notoriously  bad  —  working  at  the  fringes 
of  the  population  and  leaving  untouched  a  great  residuum  of 
mediocrity.  And  since  these  two  conspicuous  fringes  may  be  of 
very  different  extent,  very  unequally  distinguishable  from  the  gen- 
eral stuff  of  society,  and  very  unlike  in  their  amenability  to  control, 
it  is  by  no  means  clear  that  the  reformer  can  work,  at  his  pleasure, 
upon  either  the  top  or  the  bottom  with  the  same  result. 

For  several  reasons  restrictive  eugenics  offers  at  present  the 
greater  promise  of  a  beneficial  outcome.  A  number  of  human 
defects,  easily  recognized  and  apparently  nearly  or  quite  unit 
characters  in  inheritance,  are  by  common  assent  heavy  burdens  to 

1  Cf.  Eugenics  Education  Society,  Second  Annual  Report,  pp.  7-8. 


160  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  individual  whom  they  afflict  and  the  community  in  which  he 
lives.  Insanity,  deaf-mutism,  serious  congenital  defects  of  vision, 
epilepsy,  haemophilia,  would  be  grave  disabilities  in  any  state  of 
society  which  we  may  reasonably  foresee.  The  feeble-minded, 
already  anachronisms  of  evolution,  must  presumably  become  more 
and  more  tragic  laggards  as  intellectual  development  goes  on. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  positive  virtues  of  the  future  are  not  so 
obvious  and  simple.  Energy,  versatility,  a  nervous  organization 
sensitive  but  not  fragile,  strong  parental  instinct,  altruism  —  such 
have  been  suggested  as  eugenic  ideals  ;  but  they,  like  the  still 
more  general  desiderata  of  ability  and  health,  are  not  so  much 
unit  characters  as  complexes  and  coordinations  of  qualities  which 
our  present  understanding  of  heredity  would  find  baffling  and 
intractable.1  Galton  himself  was  not  unaware  of  these  perplex- 
ities ; 2  though  he  made  but  a  lame  attempt  to  evade  them  by 
contending  that  "  conflicting  ideals  .  .  .  alternative  characters  .  .  . 
are  wanted  to  give  fullness  and  interest  to  life."  3  His  conclusion 
that  "  the  aim  of  Eugenics  is  to  represent  each  class  or  sect  by 
its  best  specimens  ;  that  done,  to  leave  them  to  work  out  their 
common  civilization  in  their  own  way,"  4  scatters  the  difficulty,  but 
does  not  meet  it.  Indeed,  it  adds  to  the  previous  confusion  an 
impossible  suggestion  of  a  society  compounded  of  as  many  sub- 
races  as  there  are  recognizable  virtues. 

Aside  from  these  obstacles,  the  realization  of  constructive  or 
positive  eugenics  awaits  the  coming  of  the  eugenic  conscience. 
Legislation,  as  we  know  it,  can  decree  "Thou  shalt  not"  and 
execute  its  decrees  against  unfit  parenthood  by  segregation  of 
defectives  ;  it  is  nearly  powerless  to  enforce  "  Thou  shalt."  Even 
conscience  could  more  easily  master  the  primeval  impulse  that 
actuates  human  increase  than  create  parental  instinct  where  it  did 
not  already  exist.  Voluntary  celibacy  induced  by  a  sense  of 
eugenic  duty  is  undeniably  an  unfortunate  and  perverse  expedient. 
It  almost  surely  aggravates  the  infertility  of  the  thinking  classes, 

1  Cf.  the  trenchant  chapter  on  The  Problem  of  the  15irth  Supply  in  II.  G.  Wells's 
"  Mankind  in  the  Making." 

2  Cf.  "  Eugenics:  Its  Definition,  Scope  and  Aims."  Sociological  Tapers,  1904, 
p.  45-  3  //'/</•,  P-  46.  4  Ibid.,  p.  46. 


EUGENICS  161 

and  further  weakens  the  spirit  of  nothing  venture,  nothing  have, 
which  national  vigor  and  natural  selection  require.  Nevertheless, 
where  it  is  practiced  it  does  accomplish  the  extinction  of  defective 
stock.  Therein  it  is  more  effectual  than  the  opposite  manifesta- 
tion of  duty  is  likely  to  be.  For  the  vital  human  qualities  will 
not  be  found  to  thrive  in  the  atmosphere  of  a  family  life  which 
is  merely  conscientious. 

Whatever  the  cogency  of  this  reasoning,  the  preponderance  of 
eugenic  writers  advocate  the  adoption  of  restrictive  rather  than 
constructive  eugenics,  believing  that  thus  indirectly  a  result  really 
more  constructive  will  be  achieved.  In  fact,  before  the  eugenics 
movement  had  begun  to  make  headway,  many  a  worker  among  the 
criminal,  degenerate,  or  diseased,  had  observed  the  nemesis  that 
follows  them  from  one  generation  to  another,  and  had  become 
persuaded  that  for  the  good  of  society  and  the  rescue  of  unborn 
posterity  such  blighted  lines  of  descent  should  be  cut  off.  A 
concrete  result  of  this  conviction  is  to  be  seen  in  the  restrictive 
marriage  laws  of  a  number  of  the  American  States,  and  several 
foreign  countries,  designed  to  prevent  the  marriage  of  persons 
afflicted  with  epilepsy,  feeble-mindedness,  or  other  specified  de- 
fects or  diseases.  A  motley  literature,  for  the  most  part  marked 
by  advocacy  of  radical  remedies,  has  been  another  result.  An 
extreme  example  of  such  writings  is  W.  D.  McKim's  Heredity 
and  Human  Progress,  the  author  of  which,  satisfied  "that 
heredity  is  the  fundamental  cause  of  human  wretchedness,"  and 
without  faith  in  the  adequacy  of  systematic  segregation  to  root  out 
the  evils  he  describes,  argues  for  Nature's  method  of  elimination 
by  means  of  "  a  gentle,  painless  death,"  from  carbonic  acid  gas 
asphyxiation,  "  restricting  the  plan,  however,  to  the  very  weak 
and  the  very  vicious,"  •  —idiots,  imbeciles,  most  epileptics,  insane 
or  incorrigible  criminals,  and  others  who  for  one  grave  cause  or 
another  are  now  supported  or  detained  by  the  State.1  Saner  and 
altogether  more  impressive  is  the  argument  of  Dr.  Rentoul's 
earnest  book,  Race  Culture  ;  or,  Race  Suicide  f  in  favor  of  surgi- 
cal sterilization  of  degenerates  and  defectives.  The  operation 
of  vasectomy,  which  Dr.  Rentoul  first  proposed  as  a  eugenic 

i  op.  dt.,  p.  1 88. 


162  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

measure  some  years  ago,  and  to  which  the  name  of  "  Rentoul's 
operation  "  is  not  infrequently  applied,  has  already  assumed  im- 
portance as  a  practical  measure.  Sterilization,  by  this  or  some 
other  method,  has  been  legalized  as  a  preventive  of  the  procrea- 
tion of  the  imbecile,  insane,  and  criminal  in  Indiana  (1907),  Cali- 
fornia (1909,  amended  in  1913),  Connecticut  (1909),  and  New 
Jersey  (191 1).1  The  results  of  this  striking  experiment  are  thus 
far  regarded  as  favorable,  though  experience  has  been  too  brief 
and  too  limited  to  warrant  a  final  judgment.2 

********** 
A  review  of  what  has  been  accomplished  in  the  field  of  eugenics 
during  the  last  decade  clearly  reveals  that  most  of  the  solid  writ- 
ing and  of  the  really  scientific  and  useful  work  has  come  from 
biologists.  The  competent  student  of  economic  and  social  ques- 
tions has  rendered  comparatively  little  aid.  Perhaps  until  now 
his  abstention  from  the  discussion  has  been  wise.  Experts  were 
not  needed  to  repeat  the  memorable  suggestion  that  a  civilization 
which  should  acquire  control  over  the  qualities  of  the  human 
breed  might  thereby  control  human  welfare  also.  That  suggestion, 
vital  in  itself,  has  been  readily  enough  kept  alive  by  the  convic- 
tion of  the  inexpert  that  anything  is  the  better  for  tinkering ;  and 
in  the  meantime  the  biologists,  called  upon  to  answer  in  terms  of 
the  laws  of  heredity  whether  such  modification  of  mankind  is  pos- 
sible, have  been  coming  more  and  more  to  the  conviction  that 
whoever  can  determine  marriage  selection  in  the  present  will 
determine,  within  large  limits,  the  physique  and  intellect  of  the 
future,  and  will  become  in  a  new  sense  the  maker  of  history.  But 
in  proportion  as  the  biologist  foreshadows  the  physical  possibilities 
of  heredity  and  selection,  the  want  grows  for  wisdom  with  which 

1  At  the  end  of  1913  the  following  states,  in  addition  to  those  above  mentioned, 
had  sterilization  statutes  :  Washington,  1909  (applies  to  rapists  only),  Nevada,  1912 
(applies  only  to  rapists  and  "  habitual  criminals  ")  ;   Iowa,  191 1  ;   New  York,  1912  ; 
North  Dakota,   1913;    Michigan,  1913;    Kansas,  1913;   Wisconsin,  1913.    Oregon 
passed  a  law  in  1913,  but  the  people  revoked  it  by  referendum  a  few  months 
later. —  En. 

2  For  a  thorough  critical  study  of  the  existing  sterilization  statutes  and  their 
operation,  and  for  a  proposed  model  law,  see  Bulletin  No.  loB  of  the  Eugenics 
Record  Office,  "The   Eegal,  Legislative,  and  Administrative  Aspects  of  Sterili- 
zation" (1914),  especially  chaps,  vi,  vii,  viii. —  ED. 


EUGENICS  163 

to  utilize  them.  What  sort  of  history,  then,  is  best  worth  the 
making  ?  What  sort  of  history  does  it  lie  within  our  power  to 
bring  to  pass  ?  Is  this  momentous  marriage  selection,  from  motives 
half  rational,  half  mystical,  in  their  veneration  of  the  continuance 
of  life,  to  prevail  in  spite  of  popular  ignorance  and  passion  ?  Or, 
leaving  this  question  of  practicability  for  experience  to  decide,  is 
it  after  all  sensible  to  burden  the  present  generation  with  concern 
for  generations  of  the  future  whose  needs  \ve  can  hardly  foretell ; 
and,  in  subservience  to  the  science  of  the  day,  to  repudiate  instinct 
older  than  all  human  experience  by  "  falling  in  love  intelli- 
gently"?1 We  have  need  of  a  social  philosophy  to  tell  us  how 
far  eugenic  reforms  are  reasonable  and  worth  while. 

Even  in  its  broadly  biological  aspects  eugenics  is  involved  in 
the  long-standing  demarcation  dispute  over  the  respective  juris- 
dictions of  man's  artificial  control  and  the  unmodified  course  of 
natural  evolution.  Less  than  twenty  years  ago  one  of  the  great- 
est of  biologists,  writing  on  this  very  subject,  declared  in  no 
uncertain  terms  his  disbelief  in  the  practice  of  artificial  selection, 
as  a  means  of  human  betterment,  by  reformers  who  would  elimi- 
nate the  weak  and  unfortunate,  and  "  on  whose  matrimonial  under- 
takings the  principles  of  the  stud  have  the  chief  influence." 2 
Knowledge  has  grown,  no  doubt,  since  Evolution  and  Ethics 
was  written,  and  new  discoveries  have  gone  far  to  discredit 
Huxley's  belittlement  of  the  potency  of  human  selective  agencies. 
The  details  of  the  biological  mechanism  by  which  changes  are 
effected  have  become  far  better  known.  More  dubious  is  the 
question  how  much  advance  has  been  made  toward  a  wise  guidance 
of  such  agencies.  For  Huxley,  there  was  "  no  hope  that  mere 
human  beings  will  ever  possess  enough  intelligence  to  select  the 
fittest."  3  Possibly  the  social  consciousness  of  a  people  is  an  abler 
guide  than  he  recognized.  Perhaps,  although  the  fittest  state  of 
society  is  beyond  our  perception,  we  may  achieve  by  means  of 
eugenic  selection  a  succession  of  experimental  changes  which  seem 
to  us  for  the  better.  But  still  the  order  of  nature  decrees  that 
eugenic  experiments  made  in  haste  are  repented  at  leisure.  The 

1  Cf.  Davenport,  Eugenics,  chap,  i,  §  3. 

2  Huxley,  Evolution  and  Ethics,  Prolegomena,  p.  37.  8  Ibid.,  p.  34. 


1 64  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

eugenist  who  modifies  the  race  type  in  the  present  predetermines 
for  better  or  worse  the  mental  and  physical  endowment  of  distant 
posterity.  In  the  final  analysis,  eugenics,  like  other  attempts  at 
lasting  reform,  must  move  with  the  stream  of  processes  which 
preceded  human  intervention  and  limit  it  still. 

Yet  in  such  a  stream  a  steered  course  may  well  be  better  than 
mere  drifting.  Traits  that  have  shown  themselves  the  constant 
sources  of  weakness  and  suffering  for  generations,  or  through 
successive  culture  epochs,  seem  authoritatively  marked  by  the 
protest  of  nature  as  proper  for  extirpation.  When,  on  the  other 
hand,  physical  organs  or  mental  capacities  of  fundamental  impor- 
tance in  modern  life  show  signs  of  failing  under  the  burden  of 
the  civilization  which  has  been  built  like  a  superstructure  upon 
them,  the  continuance  of  the  present  manner  of  civilization  de- 
mands a  strengthening  of  these,  its  organic  foundations.  So  much 
may  be  hazarded,  in  generalization,  touching  the  cases  in  which 
eugenic  initiative  is  compatible  with  natural  selection.  But  the 
eugenist  in  action  must  always  proceed  with  the  caution  of  one 
who  reckons  with  the  inscrutable. 

If  the  task  of  eugenics  were  to  establish  a  new  aristocracy  of 
inborn  ability,  the  prospect  of  success  would  be  less  obscure.  The 
historical  institutions  of  ruling  castes  and  hereditary  nobilities  have 
shown  that  the  special  capacity  which  in  one  generation  after 
another  can  seize  and  retain  for  itself  special  opportunity  has 
long  been  competent  to  raise  the  family  line  of  its  possessors 
above  their  less  favored  fellow  men.  Now  modern  biology,  from 
a  new  standpoint  and  with  new  significance,  reasserts  the  privilege 
of  birth.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  writers  from  Galton 
down,  arguing  for  the  eugenic  selection  which  shall  perpetuate 
and  intensify  exceptional  ability,  have  virtually  proposed  an  aris- 
tocratic social  order  of  a  novel  kind.  But  every  preferment  of  the 
abler  members  of  a  community  is  tantamount  to  a  degradation  of 
the  less  gifted.  To  create  an  exclusive  caste  founded  on  eugenic 
superiority  would  be  to  intensify  the  unhappiness  of  such  persons 
as  are  already  inferior.  The  principle  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest 
normally  involves  wholesale  sacrifice  of  the  unfit ;  but  such  unmiti- 
gated rigor  of  selection  does  not  commend  itself  as  a  humane 


EUGENICS  165 

method  of  social  amelioration.  Nor  is  the  temper  of  the  times 
favorable  to  aristocracies  of  any  sort.  It  calls  for  a  general  better- 
ment of  the  whole  mass  of  mankind. 

Can  eugenics  bring  to  pass  this  universal  improvement  ?  Prob- 
ably many  a  devoted  follower  of  the  cause  has  assumed  that  if  its 
benefits  can  be  realized  by  any  they  might  be  extended  to  all. 
Such  was  the  vision  of  Greg : 

Every  damaged  or  inferior  temperament  might  be  eliminated,  and  every  special 
and  superior  one  be  selected  and  enthroned,  till  the  human  race,  both  in  its 
manhood  and  its  womanhood,  became  one  glorious  fellowship  of  saints,  sages 
and  athletes ;  till  we  were  all  Blondins,  all  Shakespeares,  Pericles',  Socrates', 
Columbuses,  and  Fenelons.1 

But  to  hold  such  opinions  is  to  ignore  the  relativity  of  success, 
and  to  miss  the  very  meaning  of  eminence.  In  a  world  of  Blon- 
dins a  tight-rope  walker  would  command  no  profit  or  applause. 
A  world  of  great  teachers  would  lack  for  pupils  to  be  taught. 
The  unknown  continent  which  every  one  had  found  could  hardly 
immortalize  its  multitudinous  discoverers.  Nor  could  any  one 
master  dramatist  make  mankind  his  audience  so  long  as  all  clam- 
ored with  equal  right  for  hearing.  Unfortunately,  too  often  we 
overlook,  in  our  projects  of  reform,  the  comparative  character  of 
individual  attainments  and  individual  happiness.  We  bemoan  the 
rarity  of  greatness,  forgetting  how  largely  the  exceptional  indi- 
viduals whom  we  call  great  are  great  because  they  are  exceptional. 
If,  then,  we  are  to  elevate  a  whole  community,  we  must  work  by 
a  standard  free  from  the  element  of  invidiousness  ;  for  no  social 
reform  can  achieve  a  general  improvement  of  men's  positions 
relative  to  the  positions  of  their  fellow  men.2 

Apparently  then,  eugenic  selection  is  concerned  not  with  the 
conditions  of  eminence  but  with  the  conditions  of  efficiency.  It 
must  work  for  the  internal  efficiency  which  we  roughly  call  sanity 
and  a  good  constitution,  and  for  the  external  efficiency  which 
enables  an  individual,  regardless  of  the  comparative  efficiency  of 

1  Enigmas  of  Life,  p.  112. 

2  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  this  fact,  so  often  ignored  in  contemporary  dis- 
cussions of  eugenics,  was  emphasized  by  Mr.  Lawson  Tait  more  than  forty  years 
ago,  with  reference  to  the  passage  from  Greg  cited  in  the  text.    Cf.  Dublin  Quar- 
terly Journal  of  Mud  ical  Science,  Vol.  XLVII,  p.  112. 


166  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

other  individuals,  to  make  steady  progress  in  forcing  his  non- 
human  surroundings  into  conformity  with  his  needs.  Doubtless 
the  distinctions  here  implied  are  indefinite.  For  instance,  the 
personal  advantage  of  health  and  strength  is  diminished  if  equal 
physical  vigor  becomes  the  common  possession  of  all.  Unusual 
prowess  in  exploiting  external  physical  resources  —  that  is  to  say 
exceptional  economic  success  —  has  notoriously  been  among  the 
most  potent  causes  of  inequality.  Yet  in  a  civilization  which  al- 
ready ministers,  by  palliatives,  to  ill  health  ;  and  in  which  the 
distributed  burden  of  caring  for  the  incompetent  almost  certainly 
drags  more  heavily  on  those  who  are  stronger  than  would  the 
potential  competition  which  incompetency  now  holds  in  check  — 
in  such  a  civilization,  the  promise  of  gain  to  come  from  the 
eradication  of  feeble-mindedness,  or  insanity,  or  the  proneness  to 
consumption,  would  outweigh  any  new  stress  of  circumstances 
which  it  might  involve.  And  with  this  alleviation  of  the  miseries 
from  within  might  come  augmented  economic  efficiency,  not  of 
the  few,  but  of  the  many  :  a  general  and  continuous  advance  in 
those  characteristics  of  body  and  mind  which  make  for  man's 
larger  control  of  heretofore  reluctant  gifts  of  nature. 

If  this  sketching  of  the  possibri'ties  is  even  roughly  true  it  calls 
again  for  the  verdict  of  the  biologist.  Already  he  has  shown 
reason  to  believe  that  factors  of  health  and  disease  act  in  heredity 
with  a  simplicity  and  directness  which  permit  of  intelligent  con- 
trol. It  is  now  to  be  seen  whether  the  constructive  economic 
virtues  may  similarly  be  resolved  in  terms  of  tractable  unit  char- 
acters, and  how  far  they  may  be  reenforced  with  social  solidarity 
capable  of  binding  over  to  the  service  of  the  common  welfare  the 
industrial  aggressiveness  which  might  otherwise  only  aggravate 
the  antagonisms  of  economic  life.  The  future  of  eugenics  thus 
depends  still  on  the  progress  of  sober,  discriminating  research  in 
heredity.  The  time  for  applied  eugenics,  except  in  the  restriction 
of  obvious  and  serious  disabilities,  has  hardly  come. 

But  it  is  by  no  means  'only  the  biologist  whose  judgment  is 
required.  Again  and  again,  in  the  light  of  biological  discoveries 
a  more  adequate  answer  must  be  sought  to  that  crucial  question 
the  significance  of  which  the  biologists  have  mostly  failed  to 


EUGENICS  167 

comprehend :  granting  that  by  rational  marriage  selection  certain 
recombinations  of  human  characteristics  can  be  effected  at  will, 
what  eugenic  policy  promises  the  maximum  increase  of  human 
welfare  ?  To  aid  in  answering  that  question  the  economist  is 
needed.  For  health  and  strength  and  intellect  work  out  the  good 
or  ill  fortunes  of  their  possessors  according  to  the  ways  of  eco- 
nomic civilization,  and  not  by  process  of  brute  struggle  for  exist- 
ence. Eugenics  is  not  mere  biology.  The  problems  of  eugenics 
are  problems  of  human  society. 

14.    THE  PSYCHO-PHYSICAL  ELITE  AND  THE  ECONOMIC 

ELITE1 

No  one  is  more  inclined  than  I  am  to  praise  and  promote  the 
efforts  of  the  eugenists  to  develop  a  better  and  more  perfect 
humanity,  but  I  am  of  opinion  that  this  wrork  cannot  be  accom- 
plished with  the  necessary  success  unless  the  particular  sphere  in 
which  it  is  intended  to  operate  is  first  exactly  defined. 

As  I  understand  the  matter,  it  is  expedient  to  distribute  men 
according  to  their  physical  and  mental  capacities,  and  to  encour- 
age marriage  exclusively  amongst  those  who  are  best  endowed 
physically  and  morally,  and  that  individuals  who  are  physically 
and  morally  inferior  should  be  excluded  from  marriage  as  far  as 
possible.  But  this  plan  encounters  the  gravest  practical  difficul- 
ties, since  it  is  not  easy  to  grade  men  according  to  their  capac- 
ities. Let  us  ignore  that  which  relates  to  physical  qualities, 
which  can  be  subjected  to  a  fairly  satisfactory  valuation.  Very 
different  is  the  case  as  regards  mental  and  moral  qualities,  since 
a  dynamometer  of  intellect  has  not  yet  been  discovered.  It  is 
true  some  efforts  have  been  made  to  classify  scholars  according 
to  the  results  gained  in  their  examinations,  and  Galton  has 
worked  on  this  plan,  observing  the  distinctions  of  the  graduates 
of  the  University  of  Cambridge.  But  this  method  is  very  fallible 
and  uncertain,  because  often  those  first  in  the  schools  appear 

1  By  Achille  Loria.  From  Problems  in  Eugenics  ;  Papers  Communicated  to 
the  First  International  Eugenics  Congress,  pp.  179-183.  The  Eugenics  Educa- 
tion Society,  London,  1912. 


168  READINGS   IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

perfect  imbeciles  in  life.  Some  men  can  be  judged  from  their 
works  —  but  these  are  always  a  small  minority,  and,  besides,  this 
method  of  judging  is  very  difficult  and  uncertain,  because  it  varies 
with  the  inclinations  and  tastes  of  the  judge.  And  it  must  be 
noted  that  many  men,  and  these  often  the  best,  do  not  leave  be- 
hind them  literary  and  scientific  productions.  Hence,  there  are 
many  men  who,  though  endowed  with  a  most  choice  intellect,  do 
not  leave  any  visible  trace  behind  them. 

In  view  of  these  formidable  difficulties,  the  idea  naturally  arises 
of  inferring  the  physical  and  mental  aptitudes  of  individuals  from 
their  social  or  economic  position,  or  from  their  income,  which  is 
easily  estimated  by  methods  accessible  to  all.  And  so  many  pro- 
pose to  assume  that  the  economic  elite  may  be  regarded  as  the 
index  and  product  of  the  psycho-physical  elite.  If  we  take  a  very 
numerous  mass  of  men  and  arrange  them  according  to  their  in- 
come, we  find  ourselves,  it  is  affirmed,  in  face  of  a  very  positive 
classification  which  will  be  able  to  serve  as  a  safe  and  easy  guide 
in  our  task  of  eugenics. 

Assuming,  in  fact,  that  the  position  of  individuals  in  this  clas- 
sification Is  an  index  of  their  position  in  the  hierarchy  of  apti- 
tudes, we  should  seek  to  promote  marriages  in  the  most  elevated 
classes  and  to  prevent,  as  far  as  possible,  marriages  of  the  inferior 
classes.  It  is  important  to  note  that  this  policy  coincides  in  sub- 
stance with  that  advised  by  Malthus,  who  wished  that  individuals 
of  the  superior  classes  should  marry,  and  that  those  of  the  infe- 
rior classes  should  not  marry.  He,  indeed,  advised  this  course  in 
order  to  prevent  the  excess  of  population  over  the  means  of  sub- 
sistence, while  the  eugenists  recommend  it  in  order  to  prevent 
the  propagation  of  degenerates.  But  the  result  is  substantially 
the  same. 

But  all  these  proposals  arise  from  the  idea  that  there  is  a  very 
strict  analogy  between  the  economic  elite  and  the  psycho-physical 
elite,  and  that  the  former  can  be  correctly  inferred  and  substituted 
for  the  other.  Now,  that  is  precisely  what  I  deny.  The  economic 
elite  is  not  at  all  the  product  of  the  possession  of  superior  quali- 
ties, but  is  simply  the  result  of  the  blind  struggle  of  the  incomes, 
which  brings  to  the  top  those  who  originally  possess  a  larger 


EUGENICS  169 

income  through  reasons  which  may  be  absolutely  independent  of 
the  possession  of  superior  capacity.  This  is  a  thesis  which  I  have 
fully  developed  in  my  "Economic  Synthesis"  (Paris,  Giard  and 
Briere,  19  ii)1  by  a  series  of  proofs  which  it  is  not  possible  to 
sum  up  here.  I  shall  confine  myself  to  briefly  summing  up  the 
point  of  my  thought.  Let  us  suppose,  by  a  hypothesis  far  re- 
moved from  the  facts,  that  all  individuals  are  endowed  with  equal 
psycho-physical  aptitudes,  but  that,  at  the  beginning  of  the  period 
of  observation,  they  are  divided  into  groups  furnished  with  a  dif- 
ferent average  income,  which  naturally  does  not  exclude  some 
disparity  amongst  the  individuals  possessing  that  income.  This 
divergence  amongst  the  average  incomes  of  the  various  groups, 
as  of  the  individuals  in  each  group,  can  easily  exist,  even  assum- 
ing that  their  individual  capacities  were  identical,  since  it  can 
arise  simply  from  the  possession  of  more  fertile  land,  or  more 
generally  from  property  situated  in  more  favorable  physical  con- 
ditions. Now,  amongst  these  individuals  thus  furnished  with  di- 
verse incomes,  there  breaks  forth  a  furious  economic  struggle, 
which  is  carried  on  with  methods  of  violence,  fraud,  and  monop- 
oly, and  has  as  its  result  the  ascent  of  the  conquerors  to  a  sphere 
of  superior  income,  and  the  descent  of  the  conquered  into  a 
sphere  of  inferior  income.  So,  as  the  intensity  of  the  struggle  is 
in  direct  relation  to  the  amount  of  income,  it  will  be  greater  in 
the  spheres  of  superior  incomes,  hence  in  these  spheres  there  will 
be  the  greater  number  of  income-holders  who  will  be  cast  down. 
Therefore,  supposing  that  at  the  beginning  of  the  period 
of  observation  the  various  groups  contained  an  equal  number  of 
income-holders,  or  that  the  entire  number  of  the  income-holders 
of  various  grades  presented  the  figure  of  a  square,  the  struggle 
amongst  the  income-holders  would  gradually  bring  about  a  pro- 
gressive thinning  of  the  spheres  of  the  superior  income-holders, 
and  hence  transform  the  original  square  into  a  pyramid.  Now, 
those  who  come  to  find  themselves  at  the  summit  of  this  pyramid 
do  not  find  themselves  there  through  the  possession  of  superior 
capacity,  but  solely  by  the  blind  influence  of  the  struggle  amongst 
the  income-holders.  It  may  certainly  be  said  it  is  possible  that 

1  English  translation,  London,  1914. 


I/O  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

some  of  them  are  equipped  with  superior  mental  capacity,  but 
it  may  also  be  possible  that  the  large  majority  of  them  are 
composed  of  degenerates,  and  that  no  section  of  them  excludes 
this  class. 

The  history  of  great  fortunes  goes  to  show  that  most  often 
great  patrimonies  are  created,  not  so  much  by  supreme  genius, 
as  by  shameful  and  iniquitous  practices. 

The  historical  family  of  De  Lazareff  in  Russia  has  for  head  of 
the  race  an  Indian  slave,  a  guardian  in  the  temple  of  Siva,  who 
one  night  steals  one  of  the  colossal  diamonds  forming  the  eyes 
of  the  god,  and  with  this  flies  into  Russia,  where  he  sells  the  pre- 
cious gem  to  Catherine  for  a  million  and  a  half  roubles.  And 
Myers,  in  his  recent  work  upon  great  fortunes,  has  endeavored 
to  show  how  the  property  of  American  millionaires  has  frequently 
been  obtained  by  means  of  frauds  and  the  most  odious  defalca- 
tions. Besides,  if  the  founders  of  great  fortunes  should  by  chance 
be  gifted  with  superior  capacity,  it  is  certain  that  their  descend- 
ants should  be  wanting  in  these,  because  with  regard  to  them 
that  law  of  "  return  to  the  mean,"  which  Galton  has  successfully 
established,  would  apply.  Thus,  at  any  given  moment,  economic 
superiority  is  by  no  means  an  index  of  superior  psycho-physical 
aptitudes,  whether  because  many  of  those  who  now  possess  that 
position  do  not  acquire  it  by  virtue  of  the  possession  of  elevated 
mental  capacity,  or  because  all  the  others  who  have  inherited 
these  positions  from  preceding  possessors  are  completely  devoid 
of  such  aptitudes.  Thus,  economic  superiority  cannot  in  any  case 
be  assumed  to  be  the  measure  or  reflection  of  psycho-physical 
superiority. 

But  we  can  have  an  experimental  proof  of  this  conclusion,  ob- 
serving conjugal  selection,  as  it  is  practiced  to-day,  and  its  results. 
And,  in  fact,  conjugal  selection  at  the  present  day  is  carried  on 
precisely  according  to  the  principle  which  we  contest,  because, 
regularly,  individuals  belonging  to  the  upper  economic  classes 
marry  exclusively  amongst  themselves.  Now,  if  individuals  be- 
longing to  this  class  were  truly  the  privileged  depositories  of 
superior  aptitudes,  clearly  their  offspring  ought  to  show  these 
aptitudes  in  marked  degree,  and,  therefore,  should  present  the 


EUGENICS  171 

most  wonderful  results.  Now,  on  the  contrary,  the  very  opposite 
takes  place,  and  it  is  exactly  marriages  of  class  and  caste  which 
furnish  the  most  deplorable  results.  Fahlbeck,  in  his  authoritative 
work  upon  "  Swedish  Nobility,"  has  shown  how  caste  marriages 
prevailing  amongst  them  produce  a  progressive  degeneration, 
which  manifests  itself  by  frequent  celibacy,  much  delayed  mar- 
riage of  the  male  sex,  the  large  and  increasing  proportion  of  ster- 
ile marriages,  the  small  and  decreasing  fecundity  (now  I  5 .4  per 
cent)  always  less  than  the  death  rate,  the  increasing  number  of 
female  births,  the  increasing  mortality  of  youths  under  20  years 
of  age,  the  deaths  of  the  children  before  that  of  the  parents, 
which  gradually  tends  to  cause  the  extinction  of  the  stock.  As  a 
consequence  of  that,  70  per  cent  of  the  original  noble  families 
are  now  extinct,  and  notwithstanding  the  continual  ennobling  of 
bourgeois  families,  the  number  of  noble  families  does  not  in- 
crease or  very  often  declines.  And  Fahlbeck  takes  care  to  add 
that  all  this  applies  precisely  to  the  whole  wealthy  class,  of  which 
the  nobility  is  only  a  fragment. 

But  the  same  law  of  "  return  to  the  mean  "  which  operates  so 
inexorably  in  the  circle  of  the  upper  classes,  seems  to  me  to  be 
an  ultimate  proof  of  the  absolute  separation  of  psycho-physical 
superiority  and  eminence  in  the  social  scale.  Let  us  take  some 
individuals  who  are  all  possessed  of  a  superior  income,  and 
therefore  —  according  to  the  hypothesis  which  we  dispute  —  of 
a  mental  quality  above  the  average.  If,  now,  these  individuals 
marry,  their  children  will  inherit  in  marked  degree  their  superior 
qualities,  and  hence  will  preserve,  if  not  raise,  the  superior  aver- 
age of  their  stock,  nor  give  cause  for  any  phenomenon  of  regres- 
sion, exception  being  made  of  the  exceptional  qualities  of  an 
extraordinarily  gifted  progenitor,  which  we  can  here  completely 
ignore.  Thus,  if  the  caste  selection  were  really  a  eugenic  selec- 
tion, it  ought  to  preserve  the  superior  average  in  the  descendants 
and  never  give  occasion  for  descent  from  it.  But,  on  the  con- 
trary, these  selected  marriages  give  rise  not  only  to  a  regression 
from  the  extraordinary  qualities  of  some  progenitor  of  the  family, 
but  precisely  to  a  regression  from  the  superior  average  to  a  fall 
into  mediocrity. 


1 72  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Now,  all  this  clearly  cannot  be  understood  or  explained  un- 
less it  is  understood  that  the  economically  superior  classes  are  not 
psychically  superior  classes,  and  on  that  account  capable  of  pro- 
ducing a  progeny  superior  to  an  indifferent  average.  If  marriages 
included  in  this  class  gave  origin  to  truly  select  offshoots,  there 
would  be  in  this  fact  an  indication  of  the  mental  superiority  of 
the  progenitors.  But  if,  on  the  contrary,  these  marriages  gave 
origin  to  a  degenerate  offspring,  it  seems  to  me  that  such  a  fact 
throws  a  sufficiently  unfavorable  light  upon  the  qualities  of  the 
progenitors,  and  that  it  destroys  the  theories  that  the  economic 
elite  are  identical  with  the  elite  of  thought  and  virtue. 

With  all  this,  naturally  we  do  not  wish  to  assert  the  opposite 
conclusion  —  that  the  economically  superior  classes  are  always 
inferior  psychically  and  vice  versa  —  a  position  which  is  disproved 
by  the  most  elementary  experience.  More  modestly  affirming  the 
absolute  independence  between  the  superiority  of  income  and  the 
superiority  of  intellect,  we  believe  that  we  scrupulously  attain  to 
the  proof  from  actual  fact,  which  affords  the  clearest  evidence  of 
this  independence. 

And  this  conclusion  seems  to  us  the  only  one  which  can  inspire 
a  decisive  and  rational  line  of  conduct  to  the  existing  eugenics 
movement.  In  fact,  if  we  admit  that  a  superiority  of  income  indi- 
cates by  itself  a  psycho-physical  superiority,  we  must  conclude 
that  the  conjugal  selection  which  takes  place  to-day  in  the  circle 
of  class  is  at  present  conformable  to  eugenic  principles  and  alto- 
gether excludes  any  practical  propaganda  to  effect  it.  Do  we  de- 
sire, on  the  contrary,  to  accept  the  opposite  affirmation,  according 
to  which  psycho-physical  eminence  would  be  exclusively  met  with 
in  the  inferior  classes  ?  Well,  then,  in  such  a  case  we  should  be 
obliged  to  applaud  the  conjugal  selection  which  is  practiced  to-day, 
which,  accelerating  the  extinction  of  the  superior  classes,  removes 
from  the  theater  of  life  degenerate  individuals  and  finally  secures 
the  survival  of  well-balanced  and  vigorous  popular  elements. 

Thus  any  theory  which  recognizes  the  existence  of  a  relation, 
direct  or  indirect,  between  psycho-physical  superiority  and  eco- 
nomic superiority  leads  fatally  to  a  eugenic  nihilism  and  destroys 
all  practical  action.  But,  on  the  contrary,  when  one  recognizes 


EUGENICS  173 

(what  is,  besides,  consistent  with  the  facts)  the  absolute  independ- 
ence of  psycho-physical  and  economical  superiority,  a  precise 
field  of  action  is  open  to  eugenic  policy.  It  is  requisite  to  pro- 
ceed to  a  minute  and  positive  examination  of  individual  charac- 
ters, which  must  be  directly  ascertained  and  not  inferred  from  the 
fantastic  criterion  of  their  economic  position,  and  it  is  necessary 
to  take  care,  by  means  of  wise  institutions,  so  that  marriages  may 
take  place  exclusively  amongst  the  most  select  class,  physically 
and  mentally.  This  will  certainly  be  a  difficult  task,  and  one  de- 
manding assiduous  collective  labor ;  and  we  are  convinced  that 
only  this  conscientious  effort  can  lead  to  positive  results,  and  such 
as  will  throw  light  upon  our  practical  action. 

15.    THE  SOCIAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  HEREDITARY 
FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS  l 

[Most  attempted  investigations  into  the  hereditability  of  mental 
traits  have  been  open  to  grave  criticism  because,  if  for  no  other 
reason,  they  have  failed  to  isolate  the  hereditary  influence  from 
the  influences  of  environment.  Dr.  Goddard's  investigation  of 
the  ancestry  of  the  feeble-minded  girl  "  Deborah  Kallikak,"  at  the 
Vineland,  New  Jersey,  Training  School  for  Feeble-minded  Girls 
and  Boys,  comes  perhaps  as  near  as  it  is  possible  to  come  in  sep- 
arating the  effects  of  nature  and  nurture,  and  it  is  for  that  reason 
chosen  for  presentation  here. 

Deborah's  ancestry  was  traced  back  to  Martin  Kallikak  Sr. 
"When  he  was  a  boy  of  fifteen,"  says  Dr.  Goddard,  "his  father 
died,  leaving  him  without  parental  care  or  oversight.  Just  before 
attaining  his  majority  the  young  man  joined  one  of  the  numerous 
military  companies  that  were  formed  to  protect  the  country  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Revolution.  At  one  of  the  taverns  frequented 
by  the  militia  he  met  a  feeble-minded  girl  by  whom  he  became 
the  father  of  a  feeble-minded  son.  This  child  was  given,  by  its 
mother,  the  name  of  its  father  in  full,  and  thus  has  been  handed 
down  to  posterity  the  father's  name  and  the  mother's  mental 

1  By  II.  II.  Goddard.  Adapted  from  The  Kallikak  Family,  pp.  18,  29,  33-42, 
50-69.  The  Macmillan  Company,  Xew  York,  1912. 


174  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

capacity.  This  illegitimate  boy  was  Martin  Kallikak  Jr.,  and  from 
him  have  come  four  hundred  and  eighty  descendants.  One  hun- 
dred and  forty-three  of  these,  we  have  conclusive  proof,  were  or 
are  feeble-minded,  while  only  forty-six  have  been  found  normal. 
The  rest  are  unknown  or  doubtful. 

"  Martin  Sr.,  on  leaving  the  Revolutionary  Army,  straightened 
up  and  married  a  respectable  girl  of  good  family,  and  through 
that  union  has  come  another  line  of  descendants  of  radically  dif- 
ferent character.  These  now  number  four  hundred  and  ninety-six 
in  direct  descent.  All  of  them  are  normal  people.  In  this  family 
and  its  collateral  branches  we  find  nothing  but  good  representative 
citizenship."] 

Chart  I  shows  the  line  of  descent  of  the  Kallikak  family  from 
their  first  colonial  ancestor.  It  was  Martin  who  divided  it  into  a 
bad  branch  on  one  hand  and  a  good  branch  on  the  other.  Each 
of  these  branches  is  traced  through  the  line  of  the  eldest  son 
down  to  a  person  of  the  present  generation.  On  the  bad  side  it 
ends  with  Deborah  Kallikak,  an  inmate  of  the  Training  School 
at  Vineland,  on  the  good  side  with  the  son  of  a  prominent  and 
wealthy  citizen  of  the  same  family  name,  now  resident  of  another 
State. 

Chart  II  shows  the  children  of  Martin  Sr.  by  his  wife  and  by  the 
nameless  feeble-minded  girl,  and  also  the  children  of  Martin  Jr. 

Then  follow  Charts  III  to  VI  and  A  to  F,1  giving  in  detail 
each  of  these  two  branches,  the  upper  series  being  the  normal 
family,  the  descendants  of  Martin  Kallikak  Sr.  through  his  wife  : 
the  lower  is  the  bad  family,  his  descendants  through  the  nameless 
feeble-minded  girl  who  was  not  his  wife. 

EXPLANATION  OF  SYMBOLS 

Individuals  are  represented  by  squares  and  circles,  the  squares  being  males, 
the  circles,  females.  Black  squares  and  circles  (with  a  white  "  F ")  mean 
feeble-minded  individuals :  N  means  normal  persons. 

The  clear  squares  or  circles  indicate  that  the  mentality  of  the  person  is 
undetermined. 

1  Only  about  half  of  the  original  charts  are  here  reproduced.  —  En. 


EUGENICS  175 

"  d.  inf."  means  died  in  infancy. 

A  horizontal  or  slightly  oblique  line  connects  persons  who  are  mated. 
Unless  otherwise  indicated,  they  are  supposed  to  have  been  legally  married. 

The  symbols  dependent  from  the  same  horizontal  line  are  for  brothers 
and  sisters. 

A  vertical  line  connecting  this  horizontal  line  with  an  individual  or  with 
a  line  connecting  two  individuals,  indicates  the  parent  or  parents  of  the 
fraternity. 

Letters  placed  around  the  symbol  for  an  individual  are  as  follows:  A  — 
Alcoholic,  meaning  decidedly  intemperate,  a  drunkard ;  B  —  Blind ;  C  — 
Criminalistic  ;  D  —  Deaf;  E  —  Epileptic;  I  —  Insane;  Sy  —  Syphilitic; 
Sx  —  Sexually  immoral ;  T  —  Tuberculous. 

A  short  vertical  line  dependent  from  the  horizontal  fraternity  line  indicates 
a  child  whose  sex  is  unknown.  An  F  at  the  end  of  the  line  indicates  that 
such  child  was  feeble-minded. 

N  ?  or  F  ?  indicates  that  the  individual  has  not  been  definitely  determined, 
but,  considering  all  the  data,  it  is  concluded  that  on  the  whole,  the  person  was 
probably  normal  or  feeble-minded,  as  the  letter  signifies. 

A  small  d.  followed  by  a  numeral  means  died  at  that  age  ;  b.  means  born, 
usually  followed  by  the  date. 

A  single  figure  below  a  symbol  indicates  that  the  symbol  stands  for  more 
than  one  individual  —  the  number  denoted  by  the  figure,  e.g.  a  circle  with  a 
"  4  "  below  it,  indicates  that  there  were  four  girls  in  that  fraternity,  represented 
by  that  one  symbol. 

The  Hand  indicates  the  child  that  is  in  the  Institution  at  Vineland,  whose 
family  history  is  the  subject  of  the  chart. 

A  black  horizontal  line  under  a  symbol  indicates  that  that  individual  was  in 
some  public  institution  at  state  expense. 

The  fact  that  the  parents  were  not  married  is  indicated  either  by  the  ex- 
pression "unmarried"  or  by  the  word  "illegitimate,"  placed  near  the  symbol 
for  the  child. 


76 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


Caspar 


EUGENICS 


177 


-D 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


EUGENICS 


179 


0 


-El 


i8o 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


EUGENICS 


181 


Oc/i 


182 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


o     &• 


D  -a 
-a 


-O 

-a 
o> 

-a  « 


EUGENICS  183 

The  foregoing  charts  tell  a  story  as  instructive  as  it  is  amazing. 
We  have  here  a  family  of  good  English  blood  of  the  middle  class, 
settling  upon  the  original  land  purchased  from  the  proprietors  of 
the  state  in  Colonial  times,  and  throughout  four  generations  main- 
taining a  reputation  for  honor  and  respectability  of  which  they 
are  justly  proud.  Then  a  scion  of  this  family,  in  an  unguarded 
moment,  steps  aside  from  the  paths  of  rectitude  and  with  the  help 
of  a  feeble-minded  girl,  starts  a  line  of  mental  defectives  that  is 
truly  appalling.  After  this  mistake,  he  returns  to  the  traditions  of 
his  family,  marries  a  woman  of  his  own  quality,  and  through  her 
carries  on  a  line  of  respectability  equal  to  that  of  his  ancestors. 

We  thus  have  two  series  from  two  different  mothers  but  the 
same  father.  These  extend  for  six  generations.  Both  lines  live 
out  their  lives  in  practically  the  same  region  and  in  the  same 
environment,  except  in  so  far  as  they  themselves,  because  of  their 
different  characters,  changed  that  environment.  Indeed,  so  close 
are  they  that  in  one  case  a  defective  man  on  the  bad  side  of  the 
family  was  found  in  the  employ  of  a  family  on  the  normal  side 
and,  although  they  are  of  the  same  name,  neither  suspects  any 
relationship. 

We  thus  have  a  natural  experiment  of  remarkable  value  to  the 
sociologist  and  the  student  of  heredity.  That  we  are  dealing  with 
a  problem  of  true  heredity,  no  one  can  doubt,  for,  although  of  the 
descendants  of  Martin  Kallikak  Jr.  many  married  into  feeble- 
minded families  and  thus  brought  in  more  bad  blood,  yet  Mar- 
tin Jr.  himself  married  a  normal  woman,  thus  demonstrating  that 
the  defect  is  transmitted  through  the  father,  at  least  in  this  gen- 
eration. Moreover,  the  Kallikak  family  traits  appear  continually 
even  down  to  the  present  generation,  and  there  are  many  quali- 
ties that  are  alike  in  both  the  good  and  the  bad  families,  thus 
showing  the  strength  and  persistence  of  the  ancestral  stock. 

The  reader  will  recall  the  famous  story  of  the  Jukes  family 
published  by  Richard  L.  Dugdale  in  iS//,1  a  startling  array  of 
criminals,  paupers,  and  diseased  persons,  more  or  less  related  to 
each  other  and  extending  over  seven  generations. 

1  See  R.  I,.  Dugdale,  The  Jukes,  a  Study  in  Crime,  Pauperism,  Disease,  and 
Heredity.  New  York,  1877,  4th  edition,  1910.  —  ED, 


1 84  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Dr.  Winship  has  undertaken  to  compare  this  family  with  the 
descendants  of  Jonathan  Edwards,1  and  from  this  comparison  to 
draw  certain  conclusions.  It  is  a  striking  comparison,  but  unfor- 
tunately not  as  conclusive  as  we  need  in  these  days.  The  two 
families  were  utterly  independent,  of  different  ancestral  stock, 
reared  in  different  communities,  even  in  different  States,  and 
under  utterly  different  environment. 

The  one,  starting  from  a  strong,  religious,  and  highly  educated 
ancestor,  has  maintained  those  traits  and  traditions  down  to  the 
present  day  and  with  remarkable  results  ;  the  other,  starting  with- 
out any  of  these  advantages,  and  under  an  entirely  different 
environment,  has  resulted  in  the  opposite  kind  of  descendants. 

It  is  not  possible  to  convince  the  euthenist  (who  holds  that 
environment  is  the  sole  factor)  that,  had  the  children  of  Jonathan 
Edwards  and  the  children  of  "  Old  Max  "  changed  places,  the 
results  would  not  have  been  such  as  to  show  that  it  was  a  ques- 
tion of  environment  and  not  of  heredity.  And  he  cites  to  us  the 
fact  that  many  children  of  highly  developed  parents  degenerate 
and  become  paupers  and  criminals,  while  on  the  other  hand, 
some  children  born  of  lowly  and  even  criminal  parents  take  the 
opposite  course  and  become  respectable  and  useful  citizens. 

In  as  far  as  the  children  of  "  Old  Max  "  were  of  normal  men- 
tality, it  is  not  possible  to  say  what  might  not  have  become  of 
them,  had  they  had  good  training  and  environment. 

Fortunately  for  the  cause  of  science,  the  Kallikak  family,  in 
the  persons  of  Martin  Kallikak  Jr.  and  his  descendants,  are  not 
open  to  this  argument.  They  were  feeble-minded,  and  no  amount 
of  education  or  good  environment  can  change  a  feeble-minded 
individual  into  a  normal  one,  any  more  than  it  can  change  a  red- 
haired  stock  into  a  black-haired  stock.  The  striking  fact  of  the 
enormous  proportion  of  feeble-minded  individuals  in  the  descend- 
ants of  Martin  Kallikak  Jr.  and  the  total  absence  of  such  in  the 
descendants  of  his  half  brothers  and  sisters  is  conclusive  on  this 
point.  Clearly  it  was  not  environment  that  has  made  that  good 
family.  They  made  their  environment ;  and  their  own  good  blood, 
with  the  good  blood  in  the  families  into  which  they  married,  told. 

1  Jukes-Edwards,  a  Study  in  Education  and  Heredity,  1900.  —  ED. 


EUGENICS  185 

So  far  as  the  Jukes  family  is  concerned,  there  is  nothing  that 
proves  the  hereditary  character  of  any  of  the  crime,  pauperism,  or 
prostitution  that  was  found.  The  most  that  one  can  say  is  that  if 
such  a  family  is  allowed  to  go  on  and  develop  in  its  own  way 
unmolested,  it  is  pretty  certain  not  to  improve,  but  rather  to  prop- 
agate its  own  kind  and  fill  the  world  with  degenerates  of  one  form 
or  another.  The  formerly  much-discussed  question  of  the  hered- 
itary character  of  crime  received  no  solution  from  the  Jukes 
family,  but  in  the  light  of  present-day  knowledge  of  the  sciences 
of  criminology  and  biology,  there  is  every  reason  to  conclude  that 
criminals  are  made  and  not  born.  The  best  material  out  of  which 
to  make  criminals,  and  perhaps  the  material  from  which  they  are 
most  frequently  made,  is  feeble-mindedness. 

The  reader  must  remember  that  the  type  of  feeble-mindedness 
of  which  we  are  speaking  is  the  one  to  which  Deborah  belongs, 
that  is,  to  the  high  grade,  or  moron.  All  the  facts  go  to  show 
that  this  type  of  people  makes  up  a  large  percentage  of  our  crimi- 
nals.1 We  may  argue  a  priori  that  such  would  be  the  case.  Here 
we  have  a  group  who,  when  children  in  school,  cannot  learn  the 
things  that  are  given  them  to  learn,  because  through  their  mental 
defect,  they  are  incapable  of  mastering  abstractions.  They  never 
learn  to  read  sufficiently  well  to  make  reading  pleasurable  or  of 
practical  use  to  them.  The  same  is  true  of  number  work.  Under 
our  compulsory  school  system  and  our  present  courses  of  study, 
we  compel  these  children  to  go  to  school,  and  attempt  to  teach 
them  the  three  R's,  and  even  higher  subjects.  Thus  they  worry 
along  through  a  few  grades  until  they  are  fourteen  years  old  and 
then  leave  school,  not  having  learned  anything  of  value  or  that 
can  help  them  to  make  even  a  meager  living  in  the  world.  They 
are  then  turned  out  inevitably  dependent  upon  others.  A  few 
have  relatives  who  take  care  of  them,  see  that  they  learn  to  do 
something  which  perhaps  will  help  in  their  support,  and  then  these 
relatives  supplement  this  with  enough  to  insure  them  a  living. 

A  great  majority,  however,  having  no  such  interested  or  capa- 
ble relatives,  become  at  once  a  direct  burden  upon  society.  These 

1  See  Goddard.  Feeble-mindedness  ;  Its  Causes  and  Consequences,  1914.  Also 
The  Criminal  Imbecile,  1915,  by  the  same  author.  —  En. 


1 86  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

divide  according  to  temperament  into  two  groups.  Those  who  are 
phlegmatic,  sluggish,  indolent,  simply  lie  down  and  would  starve 
to  death,  if  some  one  did  not  help  them.  When  they  come  to  the 
attention  of  our  charitable  organizations,  they  are  picked  up  and 
sent  to  the  almshouse,  if  they  cannot  be  made  to  work.  The  other 
type  is  of  the  nervous,  excitable,  irritable  kind  who  try  to  make  a 
living,  and  not  being  able  to  do  it  by  a  fair  day's  work  and  honest 
wages,  attempt  to  succeed  through  dishonest  methods.  "  Fraud  is 
the  force  of  weak  natures."  These  become  the  criminal  type. 
The  kind  of  criminality  into  which  they  fall  seems  to  depend 
largely  upon  their  environment.  If  they  are  associated  with 
vicious  but  intelligent  people,  they  become  the  dupes  for  carrying 
out  any  of  the  hazardous  schemes  that  their  more  intelligent  asso- 
ciates plan  for  them.  Because  of  their  stupidity,  they  are  very  apt 
to  be  caught  quickly  and  sent  to  the  reformatory  or  prison.  If 
they  are  girls,  one  of  the  easiest  things  for  them  to  fall  into  is  a 
life  of  prostitution,  because  they  have  natural  instincts  with  no 
power  of  control  and  no  intelligence  to  understand  the  wiles  and 
schemes  of  the  white  slaver,  the  cadet,  or  the  individual  seducer. 
All  this,  we  say,  is  what  is  to  be  expected.  These  are  the  people 
of  good  outward  appearance,  but  of  low  intelligence,  who  pass 
through  school  without  acquiring  any  efficiency,  then  go  out  into 
the  world  and  must  inevitably  fall  into  some  such  life  as  we  have 
pictured. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  our  public  institutions.  These  have  not  yet 
been  sufficiently  investigated,  nor  have  we  adequate  statistics  to 
show  what  percentage  of  their  inmates  is  actually  feeble-minded. 
But  even  casual  observation  of  our  almshouse  population  shows 
the  majority  to  be  of  decidedly  low  mentality,  while  careful  tests 
would  undoubtedly  increase  this  percentage  very  materially. 

In  our  insane  hospitals  may  also  be  found  a  group  of  people 
whom  the  physicians  will  tell  you  are  only  partially  demented. 
The  fact  is  they  properly  belong  in  an  institution  for  feeble- 
minded, rather  than  in  one  for  the  insane,  and  have  gotten  into 
the  latter  because  an  unenlightened  public  does  not  recognize  the 
difference  between  a  person  who  has  lost  his  mind  and  one  who 
never  had  one. 


EUGENICS  187 

In  regard  to  criminality,  we  now  have  enough  studies  to  make 
us  certain  that  at  least  25  per  cent  of  this  class  is  feeble-minded. 
One  hundred  admissions  to  the  Rahway  Reformatory,  taken  in 
order  of  admission,  show  at  least  26  per  cent  of  them  distinctly 
feeble-minded,  with  the  certainty  that  the  percentage  would  be 
much  higher  if  we  included  the  border-line  cases. 

An  investigation  of  one  hundred  of  the  Juvenile  Court  children 
in  the  Detention  Home  of  the  City  of  Newark  showed  that  67  per 
cent  of  them  were  distinctly  feeble-minded.  From  this  estimate 
are  excluded  children  who  are  yet  too  young  for  us  to  know  defi- 
nitely whether  the  case  is  one  of  arrested  development.  This 
point  once  determined  would  unquestionably  swell  the  percentage 
of  defect. 

An  examination  of  fifty-six  girls  from  a  Massachusetts  reforma- 
tory, but  out  on  probation,  showed  that  fifty-two  of  them  were 
distinctly  feeble-minded.  This  was  partially  a  selected  group,  the 
basis  being  their  troublesomeness ;  they  were  girls  who  could  not 
be  made  to  stay  in  the  homes  that  were  found  for  them,  nor  to 
do  reasonable  and  sensible  things  in  those  homes,  which  fact,  of 
itself,  pointed  toward  feeble-mindedness. 

The  foregoing  are  figures  based  on  actual  test  examinations  as 
to  mental  capacity.  If  we  accept  the  estimates  of  the  mental  con- 
dition of  the  inmates  made  by  the  superintendents  of  reforma- 
tories and  penal  institutions,  we  get  sometimes  a  vastly  higher 
percentage  ;  e.g.  the  Superintendent  of  the  Elmira  Reformatory 
estimates  that  at  least  40  per  cent  of  his  inmates  are  mental 
defectives. 

Indeed,  it  would  not  be  surprising  if  careful  examination  of  the 
inmates  of  these  institutions  should  show  that  even  50  per  cent  of 
them  are  distinctly  feeble-minded. 

In  regard  to  prostitutes,  we  have  no  reliable  figures.1  The 
groups  of  delinquent  girls  to  which  we  have  already  referred  in- 
cluded among  the  numbers  several  that  were  already  known  as 

1  Out  of  300  prostitutes  in  custody,  whose  mentality  was  examined  by  the 
Massachusetts  vice  commission,  154,  or  51  per  cent,  were  found  to  be  feeble- 
minded (Report  of  the  Commission  for  the  Investigation  of  the  White-Slave 
Traffic,  1914,  pp.  26-30). —  ED. 


1 88  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

prostitutes.  A  simple  observation  of  persons  who  are  leading  this 
sort  of  life  will  satisfy  any  one  who  is  familiar  with  feeble- 
mindedness that  a  large  percentage  of  them  actually  are  defective 
mentally.  So  we  have,  as  is  claimed,  partly  from  statistical  studies 
and  partly  from  careful  observation,  abundant  evidence  of  the 
truth  of  our  claim  that  criminality  is  often  made  out  of  feeble- 
mindedness. 

Such  facts  as  those  revealed  by  the  Kallikak  family  drive  us 
almost  irresistibly  to  the  conclusion  that  before  we  can  settle  our 
problems  of  criminality  and  pauperism  and  all  the  rest  of  the 
social  problems  that  are  taxing  our  time  and  money,  the  first  and 
fundamental  step  should  be  to  decide  upon  the  mental  capacity 
of  the  persons  who  make  up  these  groups.  We  must  separate,  as 
sharply  as  possible,  those  persons  who  are  weak-minded,  and 
therefore  irresponsible,  from  intelligent  criminals.  Both  our 
method  of  treatment  and  our  attitude  towards  crime  will  be 
changed  when  we  discover  what  part  of  this  delinquency  is  due 
to  irresponsibility. 

If  the  Jukes  family  were  of  normal  intelligence,  a  change  of 
environment  would  have  worked  wonders  and  would  have  saved 
society  from  the  horrible  blot.  But  if  they  were  feeble-minded, 
then  no  amount  of  good  environment  could  have  made  them  any- 
thing else  than  feeble-minded.  Schools  and  colleges  were  not  for 
them,  rather  a  segregation  which  would  have  prevented  them 
from  falling  into  evil  and  from  procreating  their  kind,  so  avoiding 
the  transmitting  of  their  defects  and  delinquencies  to  succeeding 
generations. 

Thus  where  the  Jukes-Edwards  comparison  is  weak  and  the 
argument  inconclusive,  the  twofold  Kallikak  family  is  strong  and 
the  argument  convincing. 

Environment  does  indeed  receive  some  support  from  three 
cases  in  our  chart.  On  Chart  II,  two  children  of  Martin  Jr.  and 
Rhoda  were  normal,  while  all  the  rest  were  feeble-minded.  It  is 
true  that  here  one  parent  was  normal,  and  we  have  the  right  to 
expect  some  normal  children.  At  the  same  time,  these  were  the 
two  children  that  were  adopted  into  good  families  and  brought  up 
under  good  surroundings.  They  proved  to  be  normal  and  their 


EUGENICS  189 

descendants  normal.  Again,  on  Chart  IX-a,1  we  have  one  child 
of  two  feeble-minded  parents  who  proves  to  be  normal  —  the  only 
one  among  the  children.  This  child  was  also  taken  into  a  good 
family  and  brought  up  carefully.  Another  sister  (Chart  IX-b)1 
was  also  taken  into  a  good  family  and,  while  not  determined,  yet 
"  showed  none  of  the  traits  that  are  usually  indicative  of  feeble- 
mindedness." It  may  be  claimed  that  environment  is  responsible 
for  this  good  result.  It  is  certainly  significant  that  the  only  chil- 
dren in  these  families  that  were  normal,  or  at  least  better  than  the 
rest,  were  brought  up  in  good  families. 

However,  it  would  seem  to  be  rather  dangerous  to  base  any 
very  positive  hope  on  environment  in  the  light  of  these  charts, 
taken  as  a  whole.  There  are  too  many  other  possible  explanations 
of  the  anomaly,  e.g.  these  cases  may  have  been  high-grade 
morons,  who,  to  the  untrained  person,  would  seem  so  nearly 
normal,  that  at  this  late  day  it  would  be  impossible  to  find  any 
one  who  would  remember  their  traits  well  enough  to  enable  us 
to  classify  them  as  morons. 

We  must  not  forget  that,  on  Chart  IX-e,1  we  also  have  the 
daughter  of  Justin  taken  into  a  good  family  and  carefully  brought 
up,  but  in  spite  of  all  that,  she  proved  to  be  feeble-minded.  The 
same  is  probably  true  of  Deborah's  half  brother. 

We  have  claimed  that  criminality  resulting  from  feeble-minded- 
ness  is  mainly  a  matter  of  environment,  yet  it  must  be  acknowl- 
edged that  there  are  wide  differences  in  temperament  and  that, 
while  this  one  branch  of  the  Kallikak  family  was  mentally  defec- 
tive, there  was  no  strong  tendency  in  it  towards  that  which  our 
laws  recognize  as  criminality.  In  other  families  there  is,  without 
doubt,  a  much  greater  tendency  to  crime,  so  that  the  lack  of 
criminals  in  this  particular  case,  far  from  detracting  from  our 
argument,  really  strengthens  it.  It  must  be  recognized  that  there 
is  much  more  liability  of  criminals  resulting  from  mental  defec- 
tiveness  in  certain  families  than  in  others,  probably  because  of 
difference  in  the  strength  of  some  instincts. 

This  difference  in  temperament  is  perhaps  nowhere  better 
brought  out  than  in  the  grandparents  of  Deborah.  The  grandfather 

1  Not  here  reproduced.  —  ED. 


190  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

belonging  to  the  Kallikak  family  had  the  temperament  and  char- 
acteristics of  that  family,  which,  while  they  did  not  lead  him  into 
positive  criminality  of  high  degree,  nevertheless  did  make  him 
a  bad  man  of  a  positive  type,  a  drunkard,  a  sex  pervert,  and  all 
that  goes  to  make  up  a  bad  character. 

On  the  other  hand,  his  wife  and  her  family  were  simply  stupid, 
with  none  of  the  pronounced  tendencies  to  evil  that  were  shown 
in  the  Kallikak  family.  They  were  not  vicious,  nor  given  over  to 
bad  practices  of  any  sort.  But  they  were  inefficient,  without  power 
to  get  on  in  the  world,  and  they  transmitted  these  qualities  to 
their  descendants.1 

Thus,  of  the  children  of  this  pair,  the  grandparents  of  Deborah, 
the  sons  have  been  active  and  positive  in  their  lives,  the  one  being 
a  horse  thief,  the  other  a  sexual  pervert,  having  the  alcoholic 
tendency  of  his  father,  while  the  daughters  are  quieter  and  more 
passive.  Their  dullness,  however,  does  not  amount  to  imbecility. 
Deborah's  mother  herself  was  of  a  high  type  of  moron,  with  a 
certain  quality  which  carried  with  it  an  element  of  refinement. 
Her  sister  was  the  passive  victim  of  her  father's  incestuous  prac- 
tice and  later  married  a  normal  man.  Another  sister  was  twice 
married,  the  first  time  through  the  agency  of  the  good  woman 
who  attended  to  the  legalizing  of  Deborah's  mother's  alliances. 
The  last  time,  the  man,  being  normal,  attended  to  this  himself. 
He  was  old  and  only  wanted  a  housekeeper,  and  this  woman,  hav- 
ing been  strictly  raised  in  an  excellent  family,  was  famous  as  a 
cook,  so  this  arrangement  seemed  to  him  best.  None  of  these 
sisters  ever  objected  to  the  marriage  ceremony  when  the  matter 
was  attended  to  for  them,  but  they  never  seem  to  have  thought  of 
it  as  necessary  when  living  with  any  man. 

The  stupid  helplessness  of  Deborah's  mother  in  regard  to  her 
own  impulses  is  shown  by  the  facts  of  her  life.  Her  first  child 
had  for  its  father  a  farm  hand  ;  the  father  of  the  second  and  third 
(twins)  was  a  common  laborer  on  the  railroad.  Deborah's  father 
was  a  young  fellow,  normal  indeed,  but  loose  in  his  morals,  who, 

1  It  would  be  interesting  to  know  whether  these  traits  of  inefficiency  were 
"  transmitted  "  by  organic  heredity,  or  were  simply  the  result  of  imitation,  family 
habit,  and  family  tradition — -of  "  social  heredity."  —  ED. 


EUGENICS  191 

along  with  others,  kept  company  with  the  mother  while  she  was 
out  at  service.  After  Deborah's  birth  in  the  almshouse,  the 
mother  had  been  taken  with  her  child  into  a  good  family.  Even 
in  this  guarded  position,  she  was  sought  out  by  a  feeble-minded 
man  of  low  habits.  Every  possible  means  was  employed  to  sepa- 
rate the  pair,  but  without  effect.  Her  mistress  then  insisted  that 
they  marry,  and  herself  attended  to  all  the  details.  After  Debo- 
rah's mother  had  borne  this  man  two  children,  the  pair  went  to 
live  on  the  farm  of  an  unmarried  man  possessing  some  property, 
but  little  intelligence.  The  husband  was  an  imbecile  who  had 
never  provided  for  his  wife.  She  was  still  pretty,  almost  girlish 
—  the  farmer  was  good-looking,  and  soon  the  two  were  openly 
living  together  and  the  husband  had  left.  As  the  facts  became 
known,  there  was  considerable  protest  in  the  neighborhood,  but 
no  active  steps  were  taken  until  two  or  three  children  had  been 
born.  Finally,  a  number  of  leading  citizens,  headed  by  the  good 
woman  before  alluded  to,  took  the  matter  up  in  earnest.  They 
found  the  husband  and  persuaded  him  to  allow  them  to  get  him 
a  divorce.  Then  they  compelled  the  farmer  to  marry  the  woman. 
He  agreed,  on  condition  that  the  children  which  were  not  his 
should  be  sent  away.  It  was  at  this  juncture  that  Deborah  was 
brought  to  the  Training  School. 

In  visiting  the  mother  in  her  present  home  and  in  talking  with 
her  over  different  phases  of  her  past  life,  several  things  are  evi- 
dent ;  there  has  been  no  malice  in  her  life  nor  voluntary  reaction 
against  social  order,  but  simply  a  blind  following  of  impulse  which 
never  rose  to  objective  consciousness.  Her  life  has  utterly  lacked 
coordination  —  there  has  been  no  reasoning  from  cause  to  effect, 
no  learning  of  any  lesson.  She  has  never  known  shame  ;  in  a 
word,  she  has  never  struggled  and  never  suffered.  Her  husband 
is  a  selfish,  sullen,  penurious  person  who  gives  his  wife  but  little 
money,  so  that  she  often  resorts  to  selling  soap  and  other  things 
among  her  neighbors  to  have  something  to  spend.  At  times  she 
works  hard  in  the  field  as  a  farm  hand,  so  that  it  cannot  be  won- 
dered at  that  her  house  is  neglected  and  her  children  unkempt. 
Her  philosophy  of  life  is  the  philosophy  of  the  animal.  There  is 
no  complaining,  no  irritation  at  the  inequalities  of  fate.  Sickness, 


192  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

pain,  childbirth,  death  —  she  accepts  them  all  with  the  same 
equanimity  as  she  accepts  the  opportunity  of  putting  a  new  dress 
and  a  gay  ribbon  on  herself  and  children  and  going  to  a  Sunday 
School  picnic.  There  is  no  rising  to  the  comprehension  of  the 
possibilities  which  life  offers  or  of  directing  circumstances  to  a 
definite,  higher  end.  She  has  a  certain  fondness  for  her  children, 
but  is  incapable  of  real  solicitude  for  them.  She  speaks  of  those 
who  were  placed  in  homes  and  is  glad  to  see  their  pictures,  and 
has  a  sense  of  their  belonging  to  her,  but  it  is  faint,  remote,  and 
in  no  way  bound  up  with  her  life.  She  is  utterly  helpless  to  pro- 
tect her  older  daughters,  now  on  the  verge  of  womanhood,  from 
the  dangers  that  beset  them,  or  to  inculcate  in  them  any  ideas 
which  would  lead  to  self-control  or  to  the  directing  of  their  lives 
in  an  orderly  manner. 

The  same  lack  is  strikingly  shown,  if  we  turn  our  attention  to 
the  question  of  alcoholism  in  this  family.  We  learn  from  a  re- 
sponsible member  of  the  good  branch  of  the  family  that  the  appe- 
tite for  alcoholic  stimulants  has  been  strong  in  the  past  in  this 
family  and  that  several  members  in  recent  generations  have  been 
more  or  less  addicted  to  its  use.  Only  two  have  actually  allowed 
it  to  get  the  better  of  them  to  the  extent  that  they  became  inca- 
pacitated. Both  were  physicians.  In  the  other  branch,  however, 
with  the  weakened  mentality,  we  find  twenty-four  victims  of  this 
habit  so  pronounced  that  they  were  public  nuisances.  We  have 
taken  no  account  of  the  much  larger  number  who  were  also  ad- 
dicted to  its  use,  but  who  did  not  become  so  bad  as  to  be  considered 
alcoholic  in  our  category. 

Thus  we  see  that  the  normal  mentality  of  the  good  branch  of 
the  family  was  able  to  cope  successfully  with  this  intense  thirst, 
while  the  weakened  mentality  on  the  other  side  was  unable  to 
escape,  and  many  fell  victims  to  this  appalling  habit. 

Again,  eight  of  the  descendants  of  the  degenerate  Kallikak 
branch  were  keepers  of  houses  of  ill  fame,  and  that  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  they  mostly  lived  in  a  rural  community  where  such 
places  do  not  flourish  as  they  do  in  large  cities. 

In  short,  whereas  in  the  Jukes-Edwards  comparison  we  have 
no  sound  basis  for  argument,  because  the  families  were  utterly 


EUGENICS  193 

different  and  separate,  in  the  Kallikak  family  the  conclusion 
seems  thoroughly  logical.  We  have,  as  it  were,  a  natural  experi- 
ment with  a  normal  branch  with  which  to  compare  our  defective 
side.  We  have  the  one  ancestor  giving  us  a  line  of  normal  people 
that  shows  thoroughly  good  all  the  way  down  the  generations, 
with  the  exception  of  the  one  man  who  was  sexually  loose  and 
-the  two  who  gave  way  to  the  appetite  for  strong  drink. 

This  is  our  norm,  our  standard,  our  demonstration  of  what  the 
Kallikak  blood  is  when  kept  pure,  or  mingled  with  blood  as  good 
as  its  own. 

Over  against  this  we  have  the  bad  side,  the  blood  of  the  same 
ancestor  contaminated  by  that  of  the  nameless  feeble-minded  girl. 

From  this  comparison  the  conclusion  is  inevitable  that  all  this 
degeneracy  has  come  as  the  result  of  the  defective  mentality  and 
bad  blood  having  been  brought  into  the  normal  family  of  good 
blood,  first  from  the  nameless  feeble-minded  girl  and  later  by 
additional  contaminations  from  other  sources. 

The  biologist  could  hardly  plan  and  carry  out  a  more  rigid 
experiment  or  one  from  which  the  conclusions  would  follow 
more  inevitably. 


CHAPTER  V 

INFANT  MORTALITY 

The  measure  of  infant  mortality,  194.  — The  amount  of  infant  mortality,  195. — 

Causes,  206. 

[The  general  death  rate  is  expressed  as  the  number  of  deaths 
annually  in  each  1000  of  the  total  population.  For  more  exact  pur- 
poses, as  for  instance  in  actuarial  work  or  wherever  it  is  neces- 
sary to  compare  the  tendencies  to  mortality  in  two  populations  or 
in  the  same  one  at  somewhat  widely  separated  periods,  it  is  nec- 
essary to  ascertain  the  death  rate  in  each  age-group.  Thus  the 
death  rate  in  the  age-group  21-25  is  the  number  of  deaths  in 
each  1000  persons  of  these  ages.  Formerly  the  infant  death  rate 
was  expressed  in  the  same  way,  that  is,  as  the  number  of  babies 
in  each  1000  infants  under  one  year  of  age  who  died  during  a 
given  year.  This  method  has  been  abandoned  in  practically  all 
countries  except  some  of  our  own  States  because  of  the  inaccu- 
racy of  knowledge  with  regard  to  the  number  of  children  under 
one  year  of  age  living  at  any  given  time.  Even  in  official  census 
counts  the  returns  for  the  population  under  one  year  of  age  are 
confessedly  unreliable  and  inaccurate.1  Any  uncertainty  as  to  the 
number  of  living  infants  must  vitiate  the  value  of  an  infant  death 
rate  so  calculated.  The  infant  mortality  rate  is  accordingly  now 
calculated  on  the  basis  of  the  number  of  living  births  during  a 
given  year.  Thus  there  were  in  Massachusetts,  in  1908,  86,911 
births  and  1 1 ,606  deaths  of  babies  under  one  year  of  age.  The 

infant  death  rate  was  therefore  -        —  >  or  133.5  per  1000  births. 

86.911 

It  is  evident  that  an  accurate  knowledge  of  the  ratio  of  infant 
deaths  to  births  depends  upon  a  complete  record  not  only  of 

1  See  E.  I?.  Phelps,  Certain  Phases  and  Fallacies  of  American  Infant  Mortality 
Statistics,  American  Journal  of  Public  Health,  November,  1913,  p.  1196. 

194 


INFANT  MORTALITY  195 

deaths  but  of  births  as  well.  The  backward  state  of  birth  regis- 
tration in  the  United  States,  and  our  consequent  ignorance  of  the 
amount  of  infant  mortality,  are  suggested  by  the  Federal  Children's 
Bureau  as  follows  : 

The  Children's  Bureau  is  especially  directed  by  the  law  under  which  it  was 
established  to  investigate  infant  mortality.  In  the  effort  to  comply  with  the 
law  the  bureau  is  hampered  at  every  step  by  limitations  created  by  the  imper- 
fect collection  of  birth  statistics  in  this  country.  To  study  infant  mortality  it  is 
necessary  to  know  how  many  babies  have  been  born  and  how  many  died  be- 
fore they  were  one  year  old.  In  other  words,  a  complete  and  uniform  system 
of  birth  registration  as  well  as  an  accurate  system  of  death  registration  in  any 
community  in  which  the  bureau's  study  of  infant  mortality  is  undertaken  is  a 
prerequisite  if  the  work  is  to  be  done  in  the  most  effective  and  economical 
way.  ...  As  an  illustration  of  the  extent  to  which  the  limitation  operates  it 
may  be  cited  that  in  selecting  a  single  small  city  for  beginning  its  first  inves- 
tigation of  infant  mortality  the  bureau,  on  account  of  the  generally  prevailing 
defective  registration,  had  less  than  a  dozen  cities  from  which  to  choose.1 

The  selections  which  follow  deal  only  with  the  extent  and  the 
causes  of  infant  mortality,  no  attempt  being  made  to  describe 
the  various  means  and  agencies  for  the  reduction  of  this  great 
social  waste.]  2 

16.    AN  APPROXIMATION  OF  THE  AMOUNT  OF  INFANT 
MORTALITY  IN  THE  WORLD  AT  LARGE3 

There  is,  of  course,  a  wealth  of  international  statistical  com- 
pilations available  as  a  basis  for  such  a  computation,  but  the 
current  issue  (No.  5)  of  the  Official  Year  Book  of  the  Common- 
wealth of  Australia,  that  remarkable  work  of  G.  H.  Knibbs,  the 
Commonwealth  statistician,  bearing  date  of  June  25,  1912,  pre- 
sents figures  for  the  world's  population  in  the  main  compiled 

1  Birth  Registration  and  its  Aid  in  Protecting  the  Lives  and  Rights  of  Children, 
Monograph  No.  i,  pp.  5-6.    Children's  Bureau,  Washington,  1914. 

2  For  these  the  reader  is  referred  to  the  Surrey,  to  the  Reports  of  the  Ameri- 
can Association  for  the  Study  and  Prevention  of  Infant  Mortality,  and  to  the  bul- 
letins and  monographs  of  the  Federal  Children's  Bureau. 

3  By  Edward  Bunnell  Phelps.    From  "  The  World-wide  Effort  to  Diminish  Infant 
Mortality —  Its  Present  Status  and  Possibilities,"  Transactions  of  the  XVth  Inter- 
national Congress  on  Hygiene  and  Demography,  Vol.  VI,  pp.  132-135.  Washing- 
ton, 1913. 


196  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

from  the  Statesman's  Year-Book  for  191 1,  and  offers  the  very  lat- 
est reliable  international  vital  statistics  now  available.  Mr.  Knibbs 
fixes  the  world's  total  population  at  1,722,322,136,  and,  making 
allowance  for  the  natural  increase  since  the  figures  presented  in 
Sundbarg's  Aper^us  Statistiques  Internationaux  (1908  edition) 
and  Webb's  New  Dictionary  of  Statistics  were  compiled,  the  total 
presented  in  the  Official  Year  Book  of  the  Commonwealth  of 
Australia  bears  every  evidence  of  approximate  accuracy.  Making 
his  estimate  on  the  basis  of  the  figures  in  the  editions  of  the 
Republique  Franchise :  Annuaires  Statistiques  for  1905-1907, 
Webb  puts  the  world's  population  at  1,610,000,000,  and  Sund- 
barg  in  1908  made  it  1,647,533,770. 

Mr.  Knibb's  estimate  being  the  latest  available  and  apparently 
entitled  to  full  credence,  I  have  put  his  figures  as  the  basis  for 
the  following  tabulation  of  populations,  in  even  millions,  and  from 
the  latest  birth  and  infant  death  rates  which  his  work  and  the 
Statesman's  Year-Book  for  1912  present  I  have  worked  out  the 
appended  figures  for  the  several  sections,  with  the  exception  of 
those  for  India  and  China.  My  figures  for  India  are  based  on 
the  official  Report  on  Sanitary  Measures  in  India  in  1909—1910 
(Vol.  XLIII),  published  in  1911,  and  those  for  China  on  certain 
specific  figures  presented  in  Prof.  Edward  Alsworth  Ross's  very 
recent  work,  The  Changing  Chinese  (1912),  as  checked  up  and 
modified  in  the  light  of  various  other  credible  sources  of  Chinese 
information  which  I  have  consulted  and  the  official  vital  statistics 
of  the  near-by  city  of  Manila  for  the  last  nine  years.  Thus  com- 
puted, the  number  and  rate  of  births  and  infant  deaths  now  annu- 
ally occurring  in  the  world  at  large  and  their  broad  geographical 
distribution  would  seem  to  be  approximately  as  shown  on  the 
following  page. 

The  population  estimates  shown  in  the  table  are  probably  en- 
tirely dependable,  with  the  possible  exception  of  that  for  China 
and  its  dependencies,  the  population  of  China  having  been  stated 
in  the  returns  of  the  second  National  Census,  published  by  the 
Chinese  Government  on  February  27,  1911,  as  310,168,305,  as 
contrasted  with  the  estimate  of  407,253,030  for  China  proper 
given  in  the  Statesman's  Year-Book  for  1912.  There  are  other 


INFANT  MORTALITY 


197 


SECTIONS  OF  THE  WORLD 

PcilTLATION 

LIVING  BIRTHS 

DEATHS  UNDER  1  YEAR 

!r_  § 

sgl 

r.  0  c_ 

-  "  a. 

4s 
29 
26 
36 

5° 
35 
35 
3° 

Number 

&! 

o— 

"~z  5 
a  c 

Number 

Russia  in  Europe  (and  its 
European    possessions) 
Balance  of  Europe    .     .     . 
Australasia  and  Polynesia 
India     

I36,OOO,OOO 
3I2,OOO,OOO 
7,OOO,OOO 
3I5,OOO,OOO 

434,OOO,OOO 
2O9,OOO,000 
I33,OOO,OOO 
I76,OOO,OOO 

6,528,000 
9.048,000 
182,000 
I  1,340,000 

2I,7OO,OOO 
7,315,000 
4,655,000 
5,280,000 

250 
I40 
70 
240 

4OO 
2OO 
200 
ISO 

1,632,000 
1,266,720 
12,740 
2,721,600 

8,68o,OOO 
1,463,000 

93  1  ,000 
792,000 

China  (and  its  dependen- 
cies)   

Balance  of  Asia    .... 
Africa  .    .         

America  (all  parts)   .     .     . 

Total  

I,/22,OOO,OOO 

38 

66,048,000 

265 

17,499,060 

reasons  for  believing  that  the  supposed  population  of  China, 
generally  fixed  at  approximately  400,000,000,  may  have  been 
decidedly  overestimated,  but  even  were  a  deduction  of  a  round 
100,000,000  from  the  world's  supposed  total  population  made  on 
this  account  the  annual  totals  of  living  births  and  infant  deaths 
would  still  stand  at  61,048,000  and  15,499,060,  respectively, 
and  the  world's  average  birth  rate  and  infant  death  rate  at  37.6 
and  254,  respectively,  as  compared  with  the  averages  of  38  and 
265,  shown  by  the  preceding  tabulation. 

On  the  strength  of  his  personal  observations  and  inquiries 
Professor  Ross  fixes  the  Chinese  birth  rate  at  from  50  to  60  per 
1000  of  population,  on  page  110  of  his  work  previously  named 
referring  to  "  the  present  fecundity  of  50  to  60  per  1000  —  three 
times  that  of  the  American  stock  and  nowhere  matched  in  the 
white  man's  world  unless  it  be  in  certain  districts  in  Russia  and 
certain  parishes  in  French  Canada."  He  also  says  : 

Dr.  McCartney,  of  Chungking,  after  twenty  years  of  practice  there,  estimates 
that  75  to  85  per  cent  of  the  children  born  in  that  region  die  before  the  end 
of  the  second  year.  The  returns  from  Hongkong  for  1909  show  that  the  num- 
ber of  children  dying  under  one  year  of  age  is  87  per  cent  of  the  number  of 
births  reported  within  the  year.  The  first  census  of  the  Japanese  in  Formosa 
seems  to  show  that  nearly  half  of  the  children  born  to  the  Chinese  there  die 
within  six  months  (The  changing  Chinese,  p.  103). 


198  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

In  the  London  Lancet  and  other  publications  I  have  found  con- 
firmation of  these  figures  for  the  Chinese  population  in  Hong- 
kong and  Formosa.  By  tabulating  the  official  vital  statistics  of  the 
Philippine  capital  for  the  last  nine  years  (1903-1911)  I  find  that 
the  apparent  infant  mortality  rate  in  Manila  (and  presumably, 
officials  say,  in  the  Philippines  at  large)  was  552  per  1000  births 
—  and  as  high  as  477  for  the  last  five  years  despite  the  improved 
registration  of  births  —  and  even  the  incomplete  birth  returns 
show  a  birth  rate  of  41.4  per  1000  population  for  Manila  in  1910. 
It  would  therefore  seem,  in  view  of  all  the  direct  evidence  regard- 
ing China  and  the  collateral  official  evidence  concerning  near-by 
Formosa  and  Manila,  that  the  assumption  of  a  birth  rate  of  50 
and  an  infant  death  rate  of  400  per  1000  births  for  China  is  well 
within  conservative  limits  and  very  probably  below  the  actual 
figures  in  each  case. 

In  the  case  of  India,  both  the  birth  and  infant  death  rate  fig- 
ures which  I  have  employed  are  below  the  actual  registration  figures 
for  about  three  quarters  of  the  total  estimated  population  of  India, 
the  mean  birth  rate  for  the  last  quinquennial  period  having  been 
38.64,  and  the  infant  death  rate  for  1909  having  been,  on  the 
average  for  both  sexes,  243.6  per  1000  births,  whereas  I  have 
fixed  these  figures  at  only  36  and  240  respectively.  For  the  re- 
mainder of  Asia  and  for  Africa  as  a  whole,  I  have  assumed  an 
average  birth  rate  of  35  per  1000,  and  an  infant  death  rate  of 
but  200,  and  for  North,  South,  and  Central  America  average  rates 
of  only  30  and  150;  and  I  venture  to  believe  that  anyone  pro- 
vided with  even  the  most  superficial  information  regarding  the 
vital  statistics  of  these  sections  will  concede  that  all  these  assump- 
tions are  extremely  conservative.  It  would  consequently  seem 
entirely  safe  to  say  that,  in  round  numbers,  at  least  60,000,000 
births  annually  occur  in  the  world  at  large,  and  that  the  world's 
infant  mortality  each  year  amounts  to  15,000,000  at  the  lowest 
possible  estimate.  In  other  words,  presumably  more  than  40,000 
babies'  deaths  occur  each  day  in  the  year,  practically  one  for 
every  other  second  of  time.  Or,  to  put  it  graphically,  one  in- 
fant dies  every  other  time  the  clock  ticks.  Including  the  heavy 
colored  infant  mortality  of  the  South,  the  United  States  probably 


INFANT  MORTALITY  199 

contributes  almost  if  not  quite  1000  of  the  world's  total  of  40,000 
infant  deaths  per  diem,  and  there  are  the  best  of  reasons  for 
believing  that  50  per  cent  of  the  world's  40,000  infant  deaths  a 
day,  year  in  and  year  out,  are  unquestionably  preventable.  In 
brief  the  needless  annual  waste  now  foots  up  at  least  7,500,000 
infant  lives. 

17.    INFANT  MORTALITY  AND   ITS   CAUSES1 

Infant  mortality,  or  the  deaths  of  children  under  twelve  months 
of  age,  is  generally  recognized  as  one  of  the  most  complex  social 
problems  of  the  present  day.  The  first  fact  which  entitles  it  to 
a  place  among  our  most  serious  social  problems  is  its  magnitude 
as  compared  with  the  general  death  rate.  Despite  the  lack  of 
mortality  records  for  the  whole  United  States,  and  the  many  and 
serious  defects  of  those  for  many  of  the  registration  States,  the 
registration  area  of  the  Twelfth  Census  was  sufficiently  large  to 
produce  in  its  figures  an  approximate  index  of  the  mortality  of 
the  country  at  large.  Checked  up  as  are  these  figures  of  mortal- 
ity in  various  age-groups  by  those  of  England  and  Wales,  France, 
and  various  other  foreign  countries  with  established  systems  of 
registering  vital  statistics,  they  probably  record  with  approximate 
accuracy  the  death  rate  under  age  i,  as  compared  with  the  ratio 
of  deaths  at  other  ages. 

In  a  recent  statistical  study  of  this  subject,2  it  was  shown  (the 
figures  being  restricted  to  the  registration  States  —  and  omitting 
the  registration  cities  in  nonregistration  States  in  order  to  elimi- 
nate the  abnormally  high  mortality  of  the  colored  population  in 
the  registration  cities  of  the  South)  that  the  rate  of  deaths  per 
1000  living  population  under  age  i,  in  the  registration  States  in 
1900,  apparently  was  159.3,  as  contrasted  with  a  death  rate  of 

1  By  Edward  Bunnell  Phelps.   Adapted  from  "  Infant  Mortality  and  its  Relation 
to  the  Employment  of  Mothers,"  Report  on  Condition  of  Woman  and  Child  Wage- 
earners  in  the  United  States,  Vol.  XIII  (6istCong.,  2d  Session,  Sen.  Doc.  No.  645), 
pp.  1 1-19,  48-56. 

2  Edward  B.  Phelps,  "A  Statistical  Study  of  Infant  Mortality,"    Quarterly  Publi- 
cations of  the  American    Statistical  Association,   N.S.,   No.  83    (September,    1908), 
pp. 266-268. 


200  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

only  14.1  per  1000  population  over  age  I.  In  other  words,  the 
death  rate  of  the  census  year  1900,  in  the  registration  States,  in 
the  case  of  infants  under  I  year  of  age  was  more  than  eleven 
times  as  high  as  at  all  other  ages  of  childhood  and  adult  life,  as 
measured  by  the  ratio  of  deaths  to  living  population  in  both  age- 
groups.  This  comparison  is  probably  approximately  correct,  though 
the  returns  of  all  censuses  of  population  under  age  I  are  some- 
what unreliable  owing  to  the  carelessness  of  parents  in  reporting 
as  "one-year-old"  babies  within  a  few  months,  under  or  over, 
that  age. 

The  second  fact  concerning  infant  mortality  which  has  attracted 
the  attention  of  those  who  have  investigated  the  subject  is,  that  the 
infant  death  rate  as  compared  with  that  at  higher  ages  has  shown 
so  little  improvement  during  a  long  period.  It  has  not  responded 
adequately  to  improvements  in  public  sanitation  and  medical  prac- 
tice. A  recent  English  writer1  on  the  subject  has  commented  on 
this  aspect  of  the  problem  :  "  Whilst  during  the  last  half  century, 
a  time  of  marvelous  growth  of  science  and  of  preventive  medicine, 
human  life  has  been  saved  and  prolonged,  and  death  made  more 
remote  for  the  general  population,  infants  still  die  every  year 
much  as  they  did  in  former  times.  Indeed,  in  many  places  it 
appears  that  they  die  in  greater  numbers,  and  more  readily  than 
in  the  past." 

In  many  cities  and  in  some  countries  there  apparently  has 
been  a  decrease  in  the  infant  death  rate  of  late  years,  but  this 
decrease  has  not  been  sufficiently  widespread  or  extended  through 
a  sufficiently  long  period  of  years  to  lessen  the  seriousness  of 
the  situation. 

The  State  of  Massachusetts  early  established  a  registration 
system  and  for  this  reason  is  recognized  as  the  most  reliable  in- 
dex of  American  vital  statistics.  The  following  table,  compiled 
from  registration  reports  of  that  State  and  adapted  from  a  statis- 
tical study  2  of  infant  mortality  to  which  reference  has  already  been 

1  George     Newman,     M.I).,     Infant     Mortality  —  A     Social     Problem,     p.   2. 
London,    1906. 

2  1'helps,  "A  Statistical  Study  of  Infant  Mortality,"  Quarterly  J'nl>lications  of  the. 
American  Statistical  Association,  N.S.,  No.  83  (September,  1908),  p.  257. 


INFANT  MORTALITY 


20 1 


made,  clearly  illustrates  the  fact  that  the  infant  death  rate,  when 
considered  through  a  long  period  of  years,  and  in  sufficiently  long 
time  intervals  to  remove  superficial  tendencies,  cannot  as  yet  be 
said  to  show  a  marked  decline  : 


BIRTHS    AND    DEATHS    UNDER    ONE    YEAR    AND    THEIR    RATE 

PER  1000  BIRTHS  IN   MASSACHUSETTS   BY  FIVE-YEAR  PERIODS 

FOR    THE     FIFTY-THREE     YEARS,     1856    TO    1908,     STILLBIRTHS 

EXCLUDED  IN  BOTH  CASES1 


YEARS 

LIVING  BIRTHS 

DEATHS  UNDER  1  YEAR 

Number 

Number 

Rate  per  1000  births 

1856—1860  

175,729 

I58.732 
179,740 

217.134 
209,749 

235'58o 
273,707 

330,501 

362,501 
367,815 
80,237 

85,001 
86.911 

2i,579 
23,490 

26,457 
37.498 
32,277 
37,709 
43,962 
53.288 
55.56o 
50,807 
1  1,  1  06 
11,293 
1  1,  606 

122.8 
148.0 
147.2 
172.7 
153-9 

160.1 
160.6 
161.2 

J53-3 
138.1 
138.4 
132.9 
133-5 

1861-1865  

1866-1870  

1871-1875  

1876-1880  

1881-1885  

1886-1890  

iSoi-iScK  . 

1896—1900   

1901—1905   

1906     .      . 

IQO7      . 

1908     

This  relatively  slight  decline  in  the  infant  death  rate  is  by  no 
means  peculiar  to  Massachusetts.  The  statistics  of  births  and 
deaths  in  England  and  Wales  are  known  to  be  fairly  reliable,  and 
a  recent  table  covering  the  period  1861  to  1908,  prepared  by 
Ur.  Arthur  Newsholme,  medical  officer  to  the  Local  Government 
Board,  not  only  shows  how  relatively  small  has  been  the  decline 
of  infant  mortality  in  that  country,  but  presents  in  striking  con- 
trast the  rapid  decline  during  the  same  period  in  child  mortality 
from  the  beginning  of  the  second  to  the  close  of  the  fifth  year  of 
life.  This  table,  which  is  reproduced  below,  shows  the  average 

1  Compiled  from  the  Twenty-eighth  Annual  Report  of  the  Massachusetts  Board 
of  Health  (1896),  p.  750,  and  Sixty-seventh  Registration  Report  of  Massachusetts 
(1908),  p.  207. 


202 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


death  rates  per  1000  at  each  age  and  the  relative  mortality  figures, 
the  death  rates  for  the  period  1861  to  1865  being  taken  as  the 
basis  or  100. 


DEATH  RATES  OF  INFANTS  UNDER  ONE  YEAR  OF  AGE  AND  FOR 
EACH    OF   THE   NEXT    FOUR   YEARS  OF   LIFE,   WITH    RELATIVE 
MORTALITY    FIGURES,    FOR    ENGLAND    AND    WALES,    BY    FIVE- 
YEAR    PERIODS    1861    TO    1909 1 


AVERAGE  DEATH  RATES  PER  1000 

RELATIVE  MORTALITY  FIGURES,  THE  DEATH 

YEAR 

AT  EACH  AGE 

RATE  IN  1861-1865  BEING  STATED  AS  100 

otO  I 

I  tO  2 

2  to  3 

3  to  4 

4  to  5 

oto  i 

I  tO  2 

2  to  3 

3  to  4 

4  to  5 

year 

years 

years 

years 

years 

year 

years 

years 

years 

years 

1861-1865  .    .    . 

'55 

69 

37 

25 

18 

TOO 

IOO 

IOO 

IOO 

IOO 

1866-1870  .    .    . 

'57 

63 

32 

*y  i 

16 

102 

92 

88 

88 

90 

1871-1875  .    .    . 

'54 

59 

28 

'9 

H 

IOO 

86 

77 

76 

8l 

1876-1880  .    .    . 

145 

58 

27 

17 

'3 

94 

85 

74 

68 

74 

1881-1885  .     .    . 

139 

53 

23 

15 

12 

90 

78 

64 

60 

69 

1886-1890  .    .    . 

144 

53 

22 

H 

IO 

93 

78 

61 

56 

58 

1891-1895  .    .    . 

I51 

52 

21 

'4 

IO 

98 

76 

58 

56 

58 

1896-1900  .    .    . 

'56 

49 

19 

T3 

9 

IOI 

72 

53 

5- 

5° 

1901-1905  .    .    . 

138 

4i 

16 

1  1 

8 

9° 

60 

44 

44 

46 

1906-1908  .    .    . 

124 

37 

i5 

9 

7 

So 

53 

4i 

36 

40 

1909  -   

109 

33 

14 

9 

7 

70 

48 

38 

36 

39 

From  the  above  table  it  will  be  seen  that  the  mortality  rate 
under  one  year  has  decreased  from  an  average  of  155  per  1000 
in  the  period  1861-1865  to  124  per  1000  in  the  years  1906-1908  ; 
or,  expressed  in  the  relative  mortality  figures,  taking  the  first  period 
as  a  basis,  they  have  decreased  from  100  to  80.  It  is  only  in  the 
last  period,  however,  that  so  low  a  figure  appears,  no  previous 
period  having  shown  a  relative  mortality  figure  below  90,  and  in 
the  five-year  period  1896  to  1900  the  average  was  101.  It  is 
scarcely  safe  to  assume,  therefore,  that  the  mortality  figure  of  80, 
which  is  shown  for  the  last  period,  can  be  accepted  as  indicating 

1  From  the  Thirty-ninth  Annual  Report  of  the  Local  Government  Hoard,  1909- 
1910,  Supplement  to  the  Report  of  the  Hoard's  Medical  Officer,  containing  a  Re- 
port by  the  Medical  Officer  on  Infant  and  Child  Mortality,  p.  15.    London,  1910. 

2  Figures  for  1909  from  Seventy-second  Annual  Report  of  the  Registrar-General 
of  Births,  Deaths,  and  Marriages  in  England  and  Wales.  1911. 


INFANT  MORTALITY  203 

a  level  showing  permanently  bettered  conditions.  When  the  rela- 
tive mortality  figures  under  one  year  are  compared  with  those 
for  the  other  ages  under  five  years,  it  will  be  seen  that  a  far 
greater  gain  has  been  made  at  the  higher  ages,  the  figures  in 
1909  at  four  to  five  years  being  39  and  at  three  to  four  years 
being  36. 

These  facts  might  at  first  glance  seem  to  indicate  that  the 
infant  mortality  rate  is  incapable  of  any  considerable  reduction. 
But  there  is  ample  evidence  that  a  rate  so  high  as  that  for  Mas- 
sachusetts, or  as  that  for  England  and  Wales,  is  an  index  of  bad 
conditions,  which  can  be  mended. 

The  table  on  pages  204  and  205,  from  the  latest  report  of  the 
Registrar-General  of  the  United  Kingdom,  is  of  interest  in  this 
connection,  as  showing  the  wide  range  of  infant  mortality  rates 
in  various  countries. 

It  will  be  seen  that  for  several  countries  the  infant  mortality 
rate  through  the  entire  period  of  twenty-nine  years  covered  has 
been  below  or  only  slightly  above  100  deaths  per  1000  births, 
namely,  Norway,  Ireland,  Sweden,  New  Zealand,  Tasmania,  and 
South  Australia.  Various  estimates  have  been  made  as  to  the 
proportion  of  infant  deaths  which  are  preventable,  and  consider- 
able discussion,  more  or  less  academic,  has  taken  this  preventable 
proportion  for  its  theme.  It  is  clearly  impracticable  to  attempt  to 
determine  an  absolute  infant  mortality  rate  attainable  by  all  coun- 
tries ;  but  it  is  reasonable  to  conclude,  even  allowing  for  a  con- 
siderable margin  of  error  in  the  statistics  of  the  subject,  that  if 
the  countries  named  have  through  a  long  period  of  years  enjoyed 
the  degree  of  infantile  health  indicated  by  the  above  table  the 
infantile  mortality  rate  of  Massachusetts  and  of  the  entire  regis- 
tration area  of  the  United  States  is  quite  too  high  and  demands 
attention. 

It  has  frequently  been  argued  that  a  high  infant  mortality  has 
a  selective  influence  ;  in  other  words,  that  it  acts  as  a  "  weeding-out 
process,."  and  hence  tends  to  reduce  mortality  at  later  ages.  This 
contention  was  one  of  the  main  points  recently  investigated  by 
the  medical  officer  of  the  British  Local  Government  Board,  and 
the  results  of  his  inquiry  are  embodied  in  the  recent  report  referred 


2O4 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


BIRTH   RATES,  AND  DEATH   RATES  UNDER  ONE  YEAR  PER  1000 
BIRTHS   (STILLBIRTHS   EXCLUDED),  FOR  THE   PRINCIPAL  FOR- 
EIGN COUNTRIES,  BY  FIVE-YEAR  PERIODS,  1881  TO  1909 » 

BIRTHS  PER  1000  POPULATION 


COUNTRIES 

1881 

TO 

1885 

1886 

TO 

1890 

1891 

TO 

1895 

18% 

TO 

1900 

1901 

TO 

1905 

1906 

1907 

1908 

1909 

Europe  : 
Norway      

71.2 

70.8 

70.  2 

7O.  I 

28.6 

26.7 

26.-? 

26.2 

-6  i 

Ireland       
Sweden      

=3-9 

2Q.  4 

22.8 
28.8 

23.0 
27.4 

23-3 
26.Q 

23.2 
26.1 

23.6 

2Z.J 

23.2 
25-S 

23-3 
2C.7 

23-5 
-><;  6 

Bulgaria.     

77.2 

1  CO 

77.  C 

4I.O 

40.  6 

JJ..O 

4-2.6 

J.O.J. 

* 

Scotland         .         .... 

•11  1 

11  A 

1O  c 

10.0 

->8  q 

27.  0 

^7.0 

*>7  o 

->6  1 

Denmark  

72.4 

1,1.4 

10.  4 

7O.O 

20.  0 

28.; 

28.3 

28.7 

"80 

Finland      

1  ;.  s 

1A.  c. 

71.8 

7^  6 

TIT 

11.  A 

•5  I  .-3 

308 

71.7 

England  and  Wales  .     .    . 
Switzerland    

33-5 
28.6 

3M 

^7.^ 

30-5 

27.7 

29-3 

^8  =, 

28.1 

•'S  i 

27.1 

27.4 

26.3 
268 

26.5 

27  I 

25-6 

* 

Belgium     
Servia    ...              ... 

30-7 
46-? 

29-3 

A1  7 

28.9 
11  1 

28.9 

27.7 

78  7 

25-7 
41   1 

25-3 

24.9 

-?68 

* 
76  S 

France  

^4.7 

->1      I 

T>     1 

40  i 

TO 

-?l    n 

-06 

IQ  7 

->o  ^ 

IQ  6 

The  Netherlands  .... 
Italy  

34-8 
78.0 

33-6 

17   f 

32'9 

32.1 
1  1  O 

31-5 

•j-j  6 

30-4 

"JI  Q 

30.0 
71    C 

29.7 

71  A 

29.1 

I''  A 

Spain     
Prussia  
Roumania      

364 
37-4 

41  8 

36.0 

37-3 

AO  O 

35-3 
37-o 

34-3 
36.5 

35-° 
34-S 

33-4 
33-8 

to  c 

32-9 
33-Q 

33- 
32.8 

32.6 
31.8 

Austria       
Hungary    

38.2 

44  6 

37-8 

A1  7 

37-4 

37-3 

35-6 

34-9 

33-8 

33-5 
76  7 

* 

Russia  in  Europe  .... 
Australasia  : 
New  Zealand      
Tasmania  

49.1 

36-3 

5  C  O 

48.2 
31.2 

48.2 
27-7 

49-3 

25-7 
'vS  "> 

* 
26.6 

# 
27.1 

* 
27-3 

¥ 
27.4 

* 

27-3 

South  Australia      .... 
Oueensland    

38.5 

16  e 

34-7 

-•/ 
32.0 

27.0 

24-5 
->6  7 

-y-i 

23-7 

->6  i 

23-9 

24.7 
"67 

24.7 

New  South  Wales      .    .    . 
Victoria      

37-7 
70  8 

36-4 

J4-1 
32-9 

28.0 
-•6  -1 

26.7 

27.0 

27.1 

t  r  •> 

26.8 
->4  6 

26.9 
•M  6 

Western  Australia     .    .     . 
Other  countries  : 
lanan 

34-5 
* 

36-9 

--X  c 

3°-7 
-8  6 

28.3 

-  >u 
30.3 

30.0 
",S  n 

29.2 

28.9 

27.7 

* 

Ceylon  

* 

-°O 

.v-1 

j1  •/ 
•\S  8 

_o.y 

3j-° 

72  8 

33-V 

l6  7 

Jamaica      .... 

* 

36  8 

78  6 

-S  n 

j°-° 

.O-7 
-•8  i 

j_.0 

^7  8 

Chile      .... 

j°-y 

j9-u 
->f>  r 

,0.1 

->fi  fi 

J3-u 

~<R  (\ 

J7-U 

J/-° 

-•8  8 

.00 

j/-° 

35-° 

jO.  I 

3V-J 

*  Not  reported. 

1  From    Seventy-second  Annual    Report  of  the    Registrar-General   of  Births, 
Deaths,  and  Marriages  in   England  and  Wales.  1909. 


INFANT  MORTALITY 

DEATHS  UNDER  ONE  YEAR  PER  1000  BIRTHS 


205 


Europe: 
Norway      

QO 

06 

qS 

06 

81 

60 

67 

76 

* 

Ireland  
Sweden      
Bulgaria     

91 
1  16 

* 

95 

105 
* 

102 

I°3 
I4O 

1  06 

IOI 

147 

98 

91 
148 

93 
Si 
I  0 

92 

77 
i  "U 

97 
85 
170 

92 

* 

* 

Scotland    
Denmark   

117 
IT; 

121 
136 

126 
138 

129 
1  3- 

120 

i  ig 

"5 
109 

I  IO 

1  06 

121 
127 

* 

* 

Finland       

162 

144 

IM: 

I  30 

Mi 

i  ig 

112 

I2s 

III 

England  and  Wales  .     .     . 
Switzerland    
Belgium     

139 

!?! 

i<;6 

M5 

r59 
161 

151 

'55 

164 

156 
i43 
1158 

138 
'34 

148 

132 

127 
I  c-j 

118 

121 
172 

I2O 
1  08 

147 

109 

* 
* 

Servia 

I  C7 

ItS 

\T> 

I  W 

IAQ 

IAA 

147 

1=8 

* 

France  
The  Netherlands  .... 
Italy  

I67 

181 

* 

1  66 

175 

* 

171 
165 

iSs 

159 

J5! 

1  68 

139 
136 

1  68 

M3 
127 
1  60 

!35 

I  12 
I  CC 

* 
125 

I  C7 

* 

99 

* 

Spain     

IQ7 

* 

* 

* 

I7-I 

177. 

* 

* 

* 

Prussia  
Roumania  

207 
170 

208 
in  ; 

205 

2IQ 

2OI 

* 

i  go 

* 

177 
* 

1  68 

* 

173 

* 

164 

* 

Austria  
Hungary    

* 
* 

* 
* 

* 
2  sO 

226 
2IO 

215 

212 

209 
20? 

204 
208 

* 
IQQ 

* 

2  12 

Russia  in  Europe  .... 
Australasia  : 
New  Zealand     

271 
QO 

264 
84 

276 

87 

261 
80 

* 

7  c 

* 
62 

* 
So 

* 

68 

* 
62 

Tasmania  

109 

IO  ^ 

OJ. 

gS 

oo 

OI 

8^ 

7  <; 

6E 

South  Australia     .... 
Queensland   

* 
i  77 

105 

I  IO 

99 

IO'? 

I  12 

IO7 

87 

04. 

76 

7  s 

66 

77 

70 
70 

61 

72 

New  South  Wales     .     .    . 
Victoria     
Western  Australia      .     .     . 
Other  countries  : 
Japan 

124 

122 

* 

* 

:I5 
'31 
I23 

* 

i  ii 
1  1  1 
130 

1  .17 

IJ3 
1  1  1 

1  60 

i>7 

97 
96 
126 

1  5.1 

75 
93 

I  10 

I  C7 

89 
73 
98 

i  ?  i 

76 
86 

85 

I  S7 

74 

71 

78 

* 

Ceylon  .... 

* 

i  =;8 

l6Q 

1  68 

171 

igS 

186 

l87 

Jamaica      

* 

I  TO 

171 

17  r 

I  7J. 

IO7 

'•27 

17  c 

174 

Chile      

* 

264 

T?6 

777 

771 

728 

^07 

72O 

* 

*  Not  reported. 

to  above.1  Doctor  Newsholme,  with  the  records  of  the  Registrar- 
General  of  births,  deaths,  and  marriages  as  a  basis,  concludes  as 
follows  :  "  Infant  mortality  is  the  most  sensitive  index  we  possess 
of  social  welfare  and  of  sanitary  administration,  especially  under 


1  Thirty-ninth  Annual  Report  of  the  Local  Government  Board  of  Great  Britain, 

Supplement  on  Infant  and  Child  Mortality,  pp.  74,  75. 


206  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

urban  conditions.  A  heavy  infant  mortality  implies  a  heavier 
death  rate  up  to  five  years  of  age ;  and  right  up  to  adult  life  the 
districts  suffering  from  a  heavy  child  mortality  have  higher  death 
rates  than  the  districts  whose  infant  mortality  is  low.  A  careful 
study  of  the  death  rate  in  England  and  Wales  during  the  last 
fifty  years,  at  each  of  the  first  five  years  of  life,  leaves  it  doubt- 
ful whether  any  appreciably  greater  selection  or  '  weeding-out '  is 
exercised  by  a  heavier  than  by  a  lighter  infantile  mortality.  Any 
such  effect,  if  it  exists,  is  concealed  behind  the  overwhelming 
influence  exerted  by  the  evil  environment  to  which  children  are 
exposed  in  districts  of  high  infant  mortality.  It  is  strictly  correct, 
therefore,  to  say  that  a  high  infant  mortality  implies  a  high  prev- 
alence of  the  conditions  which  determine  national  inferiority." 
Thus  in  effective  fashion  he  has  summed  up  the  second  grave 
circumstance  which  has  made  a  high  infant  mortality  a  social 
problem.  It  is  a  problem,  first,  because  of  its  magnitude.  It  is 
a  needless  sacrifice  of  human  life.  It  is  a  problem,  in  the  second 
place,  because  it  is  an  index  of  the  general  environmental  con- 
ditions which  make  for  deterioration. 

Although  the  problem  of  effecting  any  material  decrease  in  the 
infant  death  rate  is  yet  to  be  solved,  certain  factors  are  now 
generally  recognized  as  related  to  it.  They  fall  naturally  into 
two  groups.  The  first  group  may  be  termed  the  general  condi- 
tions of  sanitation  which  affect  the  health  of  the  entire  commu- 
nity, but  show  an  especial  relation  to  the  death  rate  of  infants, 
namely,  (i)  urban  or  rural  conditions  of  life,  (2)  domestic  and 
municipal  sanitation  —  that  is  to  say,  condition  of  the  streets, 
methods  of  sewage  removal,  purity  of  the  milk  and  water  supply, 
and  related  matters  —  and  (3)  the  housing  of  the  wagevvorking 
population. 

The  second  group  may  be  termed  the  social  condition  of  the 
population  as  it  shows  itself  in  (i)  the  ignorance  or  intelligence 
of  the  people,  but  especially  of  the  mothers,  (2)  the  degree  of 
economic  well-being  of  the  majority  of  the  inhabitants  of  any 
region  under  consideration,  (3)  the  prevalence  or  absence  of  extra- 
domestic  employment  of  married  women,  (4)  whether  or  not  the 
custom  of  very  early  marriage  prevails  with  the  female  portion  of 


INFANT  MORTALITY  207 

the  population,  (5)  the  proportion  of  legitimate  to  illegitimate 
births,  and  (6)  the  size  of  the  birth  rate. 

In  the  absence  of  exact  information,  the  many  discussions  of 
the  subject  during  the  last  fifty  years  have  assigned  a  varying 
importance  to  these  different  factors.  Certain  of  them,  however, 
have  been  accepted  almost  unanimously  as  being  of  great  impor- 
tance, and  among  these  the  extradomestic  employment  of  married 
women  has  been  regarded  as  fundamental.  This  relation  of 
women's  work  to  infant  mortality  was  apparently  first  formulated 
in  an  official  document  by  Sir  John  Simon,  in  a  public  health 
report  of  Great  Britain  in  June,  I858.1 

This  factor  was  further  emphasized  by  him  in  subsequent  state- 
ments,2 and  in  1861  Doctor  Greenhow,  medical  officer  of  the 
privy  council,  after  elaborate  investigations  in  a  number  of  indus- 
trial towns,  stated  his  conclusions  with  regard  to  it  as  follows  : 

1 .  The  infantile  death  rate  bears  no  definite  relation  to  the  general  death 
rate,  but  their  comparative  proportions  to  each  other  vary  in  different  districts. 

2.  The  infantile  death  rate  bears  the  largest  proportion  to  the  general  death 
rate  in  districts  where  the  infantile  population  is  especially  exposed  to  unwhole- 
some influences,  as  in  Coventry,  Nottingham,  and  certain  other  manufacturing 
towns. 

3.  The  unwholesome  influences  to  which  infants  are  exposed  in  the  manu- 
facturing towns  comprised  in  the  present  inquiry  may  be  attributed  mainly  to 
the  industrial  employment  of  the  married  women,  which  leads  them  to  consign 
the  tendance  of  their  infants,  at  a  very  early  age,  to  young  children  or  strangers. 

4.  That  infants  thus  deprived  of  the  mother's  care  are  habitually  fed  on 
diet  ill  adapted  to  their  digestive  powers,  and  are  very  frequently  drugged  with 
opiates  in  order  to  allay  the  fractiousness  arising  from  the  illness  induced  by 
improper  food. 

5.  That  infants  in  manufacturing  towns  where  women  are  much  engaged 
in  factory  labor  are  likewise  exposed  to  other  causes  of  sickness  proceeding  from 
the  ignorance  or  carelessness  of  the  mothers  or  nurses,  such  as  deficiency  of 
exercise  and  exposure  to  inclement  weather.3 

Doctor  Greenhow's  statement  since  that  day  has  been  generally 
accepted  as  a  satisfactory  summary  of  an  acknowledged  fact,  but 

1  Public  Health  Reports  of  Great  Britain,  Vol.  I,  p.  460. 

2  English  Sanitary  Institutions,  1890.  p.  298;   Papers  relating  to  the  Sanitary 
State  of  the  People  of  England,  1858,  pp.  xxxiv,  132  ;  Fourth  Report  of  the  Medi- 
cal Officer  of  the  Privy  Council,  1861,  pp.  187-196. 

3  Fourth  Report  of  the  Medical  Officer  of  the  Privy  Council,  pp.  187-196. 


208  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

very  recently  a  more  accurate  statistical  and  medical  knowledge 
has  opened  the  entire  question  of  infant  mortality  for  a  critical 
reconsideration. 

It  is  obvious  that  prolonged  and  exhaustive  medical,  statistical, 
and  social  research  would  be  necessary  before  the  relative  impor- 
tance of  this  and  the  many  other  enumerated  factors  related  to 
the  infant  mortality  problem  could  be  accurately  known.  It  would 
be  possible  to  draw  positive  conclusions  as  to  the  relative  impor- 
tance of  this  particular  factor  only  by  point-to-point  comparison  of 
the  infant  mortality  for  a  period  of  years  in  two  large  communi- 
ties, or  two  classes  of  large  communities,  in  which  all  the  material 
conditions  were  substantially  common,  with  the  single  important 
exception  that  in  one  a  considerable  proportion  of  the  married 
female  population  of  childbearing  age  were  at  work  outside  of 
their  homes  and  in  the  other  community  with  which  the  compari- 
son was  made  none  of  the  women  were  so  employed. 

To  admit  of  entirely  sound  conclusions,  it  would  be  necessary 
that  the  populations  —  and  especially  the  women  —  of  both  com- 
munities should  be  of  like  ages,  races,  and  physical  health,  that 
their  living  conditions  should  be  practically  identical,  and  that,  in 
a'  general  way,  the  childbearing  women  should  be  of  about  the 
same  grade  of  intelligence.  Of  course  no  such  comparison  ever 
has  been  or  ever  will  be  possible,  for  the  reason  that  the  one 
exception  of  the  women's  work  would  in  various  ways  make  the 
other  conditions  of  the  two  communities  radically  dissimilar.  In 
default  of  some  such  comparison  on  a  broad  scale  of  the  mortality 
of  the  infants  of  working  and  nonworking  women  of  similar  ages, 
races,  intelligence,  and  living  conditions,  no  one  can  determine 
accurately  how  many  of  the  deaths  of  working  women's  infants 
are  due  to  the  mothers'  work  and  how  many  to  the  other  condi- 
tions of  their  lives  and  environment. 

The  nearest  approach  to  definite  conclusions  which  seems  to 
be  practicable  is  that  to  be  obtained  by  a  tabulation  of  the  expe- 
rience for  many  years  of  large  and  representative  communities  in 
which  widely  varying  percentages  of  married  women  of  child- 
bearing  age  are  employed  in  work  taking  them  away  from  their 
homes,  and  by  a  comparison  not  only  of  the  average  infant  death 


INFANT  MORTALITY  209 

rates  for  these  several   communities  but  of  all  their  social  and 
economic  conditions  which  admit  of  statistical  expression. 

All  that  such  a  statistical  presentation  of  the  subject  can  accom- 
plish is  to  point  out  in  the  simplest  fashion  certain  facts  which 
may  help  to  serve  as  guides  in  determining  the  part  which  the 
extradomestic  employment  of  married  women  plays  in  determining 
the  infant  death  rate. 

********** 

As  noted  at  the  beginning  of  this  study,  it  has  often  been  cus- 
tomary, in  approaching  statistically  the  subject  of  the  employment 
of  married  women  in  its  relation  to  infant  mortality,  to  ignore  the 
many  other  complex  social  and  economic  factors  having  a  bear- 
ing upon  the  problem.  The  preceding  tables 1  show  clearly  that 
in  the  cities  of  New  England  certain  of  these  factors  which  in 
the  past  have  been  ignored  in  the  consideration  of  the  problem 
are  with  fair  uniformity  coexistent  with  a  high  infant  mortality 
rate  ;  these  being  (i)  a  high  proportion  of  foreign  born,  (2)  a  high 
female  illiteracy,  and  (3)  a  high  birth  rate.  These  factors  operate 
with  equal  force  over  large  or  small  areas  —  that  is,  the  results 
when  the  six  New  England  States  are  regarded  as  units  are  not 
different  than  when  individual  cities  of  the  State  of  Massachusetts 
are  studied  as  units,  the  degree  of  urbanization  of  the  population 
taking  the  place  of  the  size  of  towns,  and  accompanying  the  infant 
death  rate  with  almost  perfect  regularity  through  the  last  three 
census  periods. 

The  two  other  factors  considered  in  this  study  relate  themselves 
with  less  regularity  to  the  infant  death  rate.  The  first  of  these 
is  the  size  of  cities.  Large  towns,  in  general,  have  rather  higher 
rates  than  small  towns,  although,  as  already  noted,  this  relation- 
ship is  found  not  to  be  invariable.  For  example,  in  the  decade 
1898-1907  the  city  of  Lynn,  with  a  population  of  77,042,  had 
an  infant  death  rate  of  but  133  per  1000  births,  while  Lawrence, 
with  a  population  of  70,050  had  a  death  rate  of  181.2  per  1000; 
Brockton,  with  a  population  of  47,794,  of  only  109.5  per  1000 
births,  while  Chicopee,  with  a  population  of  only  20,191,  had  an 
infant  death  rate  of  178.4  per  1000  births. 

1  Omitted  here.— ED. 


210  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

The  second  factor  which  is  found,  statistically  speaking,  asso- 
ciated very  uncertainly,  to  say  the  least,  with  the  infant  death  rate, 
is  the  subject  of  this  study  —  the  proportion  of  women  engaged 
in  extradomestic  occupations. 

It  is  desirable  for  a  moment  to  revert  to  the  real  question  of 
prime  importance  in  the  relation  of  women's  work  to  infant  mor- 
tality, namely,  how  many  mothers  of  young  children  return  to 
industrial  employment  outside  of  their  homes  before  their  infants 
have  attained  to  the  age  of  one  year  ?  Little  accurate  informa- 
tion is  available,  but  the  Report  on  the  Condition  of  Woman  and 
Child  Wage- Earners  in  the  Cotton  Textile  Industry  shows  that 
only  23,  or  14.1  per  cent,  out  of  163  married  women  working 
in  cotton  .mills  who  were  scheduled  in  New  England  had  children 
under  three  years  of  age.1  The  distribution  of  these  23  children 
by  ages  in  detail  is  not  shown  ;  but  it  is  obvious  that  the  propor- 
tion of  women  working  in  the  cotton  mills  who  have  infants 
(children  under  one  year)  at  home  must  be  very  small  at  any 
particular  time,  and  in  no  wise  sufficient  to  account  for  the  exces- 
sive infant  mortality  rate  of  the  textile  cities.  The  fact  that  the 
employment  of  mothers  is  not  the  chief  factor  in  its  determina- 
tion is  indicated  conclusively  by  the  detailed  study  of  the  infant 
mortality  of  Eall  River  during  1908. 

It  has  been  noted  repeatedly  that  the  proportion  which  the 
number  of  foreign-born  bears  to  the  total  population,  the  degree  of 
urbanization,  or  size  of  cities,  the  birth  rate,  and  the  per  cent  of 
female  illiteracy,  bear,  with  few  exceptions,  a  constant  and  strik- 
ing relation  to  the  infant  death  rate. 

1  The  Report  on  the  Condition  of  Woman  and  Child  Wage-Earners  in  the 
Cotton  Textile  Industry  (Vol.  I,  pp.  1010  and  1032)  shows  that  out  of  407  mar- 
ried women  living  in  the  Massachusetts  cotton-mill  families  visited  in  the  course 
of  the  investigation  of  the  Bureau  of  Labor  only  101  married  women  were  at 
work  as  wage-earners  at  the  time  of  the  visits,  and  that  only  13,  or  12.9  per  cent, 
of  these  were  mothers  of  children  under  three  years  of  age.  Out  of  806  married 
women  living  in  the  New  England  families  included  in  the  same  investiga- 
tion 175  married  women  were  at  work,  and  only  23,  or  14.1  per  cent,  had  chil- 
dren under  three  years  of  age.  Compare  Men's  Ready-Made  Clothing,  Vol.  II  of 
this  report,  showing  that  only  9.9  per  cent  of  the  married  women  at  work  (not  in- 
cluding home  finishers)  had  children  under  three  years  of  age ;  Glass  Industry, 
Vol.  Ill,  with  14.1  per  cent;  and  Silk  Industry,  with  17.3  per  cent. 


INFANT  MORTALITY  21 1 

But  it  must  not  be  inferred  that  these,  any  more  than  the 
extradomestic  employment  of  women,  are  the  real  causes  which 
determine  that  death  rate.  All  the  factors  discussed  in  this  study 
are  rather  the  indices  of  the  true  causes  of  high  or  low  infant 
death  rates,  the  causes  themselves  lying  deep  in  the  social  and 
economic  structure  of  the  different  population  units  under  con- 
sideration. 

These  true  causes  have  already  received  study  abroad,  and  to 
a  less  degree  have  been  investigated  in  the  United  States  more 
recently,  and  a  brief  summary  of  the  findings  in  the  case  will 
best  serve  to  correlate  the  statistical  facts  presented  in  this  paper 
with  the  conditions  of  whose  presence  they  are  the  outward  sign. 

It  is  well  again  to  emphasize  the  fundamental  proposition,  effec- 
tively stated  by  Doctor  Newman,  that  "  the  causes  of  infant  mor- 
tality are  composite.  It  has  been  well  said  that  every  effect  has 
an  ancestry  of  causes.  Preeminently  is  this  the  case  in  regard  to 
infant  mortality,  which  is  due  to  a  combination  of  factors  closely 
interrelated."  l  He  further  observes  concerning  the  facts  which 
seem  to  him  to  be  indicated  by  a  detailed  examination  of  Eng- 
land's infant  mortality  statistics  through  many  years  : 

1 .  Nearly  one  half  (about  48  per  cent)  of  the  infant  deaths  in  towns  occur 
in  the  first  three  months  of  life ; 

2.  The  chief  fatality  in  these  first  three  months  is  caused  by  prematurity 
and  immaturity ; 

3.  By  far  the  greatest  fatality  in  the  remainder  of  the  first  year  of  life  is 
due  to  inflammatory  conditions  of  the  lungs  and  to  epidemic  diarrhea ;  and 

4.  Infant  mortality  is  not  declining  owing  to  the  fact  that  while  certain 
diseases  have  enormously  decreased,  prematurity,   pneumonia,  and  epidemic 
diarrhea  have,  in  spite  of  all  advance  in  science,  steadily  increased,  particularly 
in  the  towns  and  where  the  lamp  of  social  life  burns  low.2 

Doctor  Newsholme's  observations,  made  in  a  recent  official  re- 
port,3 are,  generally  speaking,  in  agreement  with  Doctor  Newman's 

1  Newman,  Infant  Mortality,  p.  60. 

2  It  should  be  remembered,  however,  that  since  the  publication  of  Dr.  Newman's 
book,  a  considerable  decline  in  the  infant  death  rate  had  taken  place  in  England, 
prior  to  the  European  war.    Later  statistics  will  reveal  the  amount  of  the  decline 
and  also  the  reactionary  influence  of  war  conditions.  — ED. 

3  Thirty-ninth  Annual  Report  of  the  Local  Government  Board  of  Great  Britain, 
Supplement  on  Infant  and  Child  Mortality. 


212  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

statement  of  the  salient  facts,  with  the  exception  that  Doctor 
Newsholme  does  not  consider  that  there  has  been  an  absolute  in- 
crease in  England  and  Wales  in  deaths  from  prematurity.  He 
states  his  conclusion  thus:  "There  does  not  appear  to  be  suffi- 
cient foundation  for  the  statement  that  prematurity  to  an  increasing 
extent  is  a  cause  of  mortality  in  the  English  experience.  There 
has  probably  been  much  transference  of  certification  between  dif- 
ferent vague  (related)  causes  of  death,  and  it  is  safer  to  consider 
all  these  vague  conditions  together  under  a  common  heading. 
When  this  is  done,  evidence  of  increased  death  rate  disappears."  l 
Two  additional  observations  by  Doctor  Newsholme  should  be 
added  to  the  conclusions  of  Doctor  Newman  : 

1 .  A  high  infant  death  rate  in  a  given  community  implies  in  general  a  high 
death  rate  in  the  next  four  years  of  life,  while  low  death  rates  at  both  age 
periods  are  similarly  associated.'2 

2.  It  is  clear  that  the  counties  having  high  infant  mortalities  continue  in 
general  to  suffer  somewhat  excessively  throughout  the  first  twenty  years  of 
human  life,  and  that  counties  having  low  infantile  mortalities  continue  to  have 
relatively  low  death  rates  in  the  first  twenty  years  of  life,  though  the  superiority 
is  not  so  great  at  the  later  as  at  the  earlier  ages.8 

With  these  fundamental  facts  in  mind  it  is  possible  to  pass  to 
a  consideration  of  the  true  factors  which  influence  infant  mortality. 
The  following  statement  of  Doctor  Newsholme,  while  referring 
to  English  conditions,  is  apparently  almost  equally  applicable  to 
the  conditions  prevalent  in  Massachusetts  : 

These  [influences]  may  be  classified  into  prenatal,  acting  through  the  mother 
and  dependent  on  her  health ;  natal,  and  still  in  large  measure  due  to  the  con- 
dition of  the  mother,  e.g.  causes  of  difficult  parturition,  though  the  skill  of  the 
doctor  or  midwife  is  also  largely  concerned ;  and  postnatal,  which  arise  from 
environmental  conditions. 

It  has  been  already  seen  that  in  the  counties  of  England  and  Wales  show- 
ing excessive  or  low  infant  mortality  these  different  causes  of  high  or  low 
mortality  are  acting  together  to  such  an  extent  as  to  be  almost  inextricable.  I 

1  Thirty-ninth  Annual  Report  of  the  Local  Government  ISoard  of  Great  Britain, 
Supplement  on  Infant  and  Child  Mortality,  p.  35. 

*  Ibid.,  P.  ,3. 

3  //'/</.,  p.  17.  [Both  of  these  conclusions  have  been  vigorously  assailed  by  Karl 
Pearson  (Darwinism,  Medical  Progress  and  Eugenics,  1912)  and  E.  C.  Snow  (The 
Intensity  of  Natural  Selection  in  Man,  1911). —  En.] 


INFANT  MORTALITY  213 

prefer,  therefore,  for  the  present,  to  accept  the  tangle  and  to  discuss  the  factors 
of  infant  mortality  apart  from  any  such  attempt  at  separation. 

Among  the  influences  affecting  infant  mortality  are  the  following.  They  are 
not  given  in  order  of  importance. 

1 .  The  proportion  of  male  to  female  births. 

2.  The  proportion  of  legitimate  to  illegitimate  births. 

3.  The  magnitude  of  the  birth  rate,  which  may  for  the  present  purpose  be 
otherwise  put  as  the  size  of  the  family. 

4.  The  number  of  stillbirths. 

5.  The  quality  of  the  help  given  at  birth. 

6.  The  age  of  the  wife  at  marriage. 

7.  Poverty  and  social  conditions. 

8.  The  extradomestic  employment  of  married  women. 

9.  Urban  or  rural  conditions  of  life. 

10.  Domestic  and  municipal  sanitation. 

1 1 .  Conditions  of  housing. 

1 2.  Ignorance  and  fecklessness  of  mothers. 

Obviously  the  above  list  is  incomplete,  and  still  more  obviously 
the  different  factors  overlap  at  various  points. 

It  is  beyond  the  province  of  this  study  to  discuss  in  detail  this 
complicated  list  of  factors  ;  but  because  of  the  bearing  of  certain 
of  them  upon  the  relation  of  the  extradomestic  employment  of 
married  women  to  the  infant  death  rate,  these  must  be  separately 
considered.  It  will  be  recalled  that  those  factors  statistically  pre- 
sented with  the  two  just  named  were  the  proportion  of  foreign- 
born  in  the  total  population,  the  degree  of  urbanization  of  the 
population,  the  birth  rate,  and  female  illiteracy. 

It  may  at  first  appear  that  two  of  these  four  factors,  which  were 
found  to  show  an  almost  invariable  statistical  relation  to  the  infant 
death  rate  of  Massachusetts  and  of  New  England,  namely,  the 
proportion  of  foreign-born  and  of  female  illiteracy,  are  unrelated 
to  the  determining  influences  listed  by  Doctor  Newsholme.  But 
a  moment's  observation  will  show  that  these  two  factors  are  but 
another  expression  of  some  of  the  most  important  factors  named 
by  him. 

The  newly  arrived  immigrant,  especially  if  he  be  of  a  non- 
English-speaking  race,  must  usually  begin  at  the  bottom  of  the 
industrial  ladder  and,  therefore,  is  usually  poor.  He  crowds  into 
cities,  thus  rapidly  increasing  the  degree  of  urbanization  and  the 


214  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

size  of  the  cities.  Owing  to  his  ignorance,  his  poverty,  and  his 
low  standard  of  life  he  is  often  found  under  the  worst  housing 
conditions  which  our  cities  afford.  More  than  that,  he  not  only 
lives  in  the  worst  houses,  but  in  the  worst  districts  of  our  cities, 
speaking  from  the  sanitary  viewpoint,  and  as  if  this  is  not  enough, 
coupled  with  the  unfair  treatment  which  his  adopted  city  gives 
him  in  the  form  of  wretched  housing  and  squalid  streets,  his 
wife,  unused  to  the  living  conditions  into  which  she  finds  herself 
thrust,  is  likely  to  be  none  too  successful  in  her  efforts  to  cope 
with  the  situation,  and  her  housekeeping  is  often  far  from  sanitary 
according  to  the  standard  necessary  for  urban  health. 

More  than  this,  there  is  a  distinct  tendency  to  early  marriage 
and  large  families  among  the  foreign-born,  thus  accentuating  pov- 
erty, and  owing  to  the  custom  among  them  of  employing  midwives, 
the  quality  of  help  given  at  birth  is  frequently  far  from  good. 

The  proportion  of  foreign-born  in  a  given  population  also  would 
serve  in  the  absence  of  other  data  as  an  index  of  the  ignorance 
of  mothers,  but  in  this  case  we  have  the  high  per  cent  of  female 
illiteracy  in  the  high  mortality  towns,  a  rough  but  valuable  index 
of  what  Doctor  Newsholme  calls  the  "  ignorance  and  fecklessness 
of  mothers." 

In  other  words,  a  high  proportion  of  foreign-born  in  a  city, 
with  its  correlative,  the  per  cent  of  female  illiteracy,  indicates  with 
reasonable  assurance  that  in  that  city  — 

(a)  A  large  proportion  of  its  population  will  live  in  poverty. 

(3)  A  large  proportion  will  live  under  the  worst  conditions  as 
to  housing,  domestic  and  municipal  sanitation.  This  is  likely  to 
involve,  it  will  be  remembered,  a  bad  milk  supply  and  all  the 
conditions  of  filth  which  are  the  powerful  causes  of  epidemic 
diarrhea  in  infants. 

(c)  In  such  a  city,  with  the  preponderance  of  foreign  traditions 
and  standards,  a  large  proportion  of  its  women  will  marry  young 
and  bear  large  families. 

(d)  At  birth  too  often  the  care  given  will  be  that  of  an  igno- 
rant midwife. 

(e)  After  birth  the  mother,  hampered  by  poverty  and  ignorance, 
often  will  have  little  idea  how  to  care  for  her  child. 


INFANT  MORTALITY  215 

It  would  seem,  therefore,  that  at  least  some  of  Doctor  News- 
holme's  conclusions  as  to  the  significance  of  these  influences 
would  be  applicable  equally  to  England  or  to  Massachusetts.  He 
finds  that  — 

1.  "  Large  families  evidently  do  not  necessarily  imply  a  tend- 
ency to  high  infant  mortality.     The  connection  often  observed 
between  a  high  birth   rate  and  a  high  rate  of  infant  mortality 
probably  is  due  in  great  part  to  the  fact  that  large  families  are 
common  among  the  poorest  classes,  and  these  classes  are  specially 
exposed  to  the  degrading  influences  producing  excessive  infant 
mortality."  l     Expressed  in  another  form  and  applied  to  Massa- 
chusetts, the  high  birth  rate  of  the  Massachusetts  cities  having 
also  a  high  death  rate  means  that  a  large  number  of  infants  are 
born  into  conditions  under  which  they  cannot  survive. 

2.  As  to  the  quality  of  help  given  at  birth   "there  is  much 
prima  facie  evidence  pointing  to  negligent  and  careless  attendance 
in  childbirth  and  to  consequently  excessive  mortality  not  only  of 
mothers  but  also  of  infants  in  early  infancy."2 

3.  "  Early  motherhood  is  associated  to  a  minor  extent  with  a 
relatively  high  infant  mortality." 

4.  "  Infant  mortality  is  higher  among  the  poor  than  among  the 
well-to-do,  although  natural  feeding  of  infants  is  probably  more 
general  among  the  former." 

5.  "Infant  mortality  is  always  highest  in  crowded  centers  of 
population  ;  but  a  high  infant  mortality  can  (by  proper  measures 
as  to  sanitation  and  housing)  be  avoided  even  under  conditions 
of  dense  aggregation  of  population."3 

6.  "  Infant  mortality  is  highest  in  those  counties  where,  under 
urban  conditions  of  life,  filthy  privies  are  permitted,  where  scav- 
enging is  neglected,  and  where  the  streets  and  yards  are  to  a  large 
extent  not  '  made  up  '  or  '  paved/  "  4 

"  Diarrhea  is  most  prevalent  where  municipal  sanitation  is  bad. 
It  cannot  be  entirely  removed  unless  infants'  food  is  prepared 
under  absolutely  cleanly  conditions." 

1  Thirty-ninth  Annual  Report  of  the  Local  Government  Board  of  Great  Britain, 
Supplement  on  Infant  and  Child  Mortality,  p.  49. 

"  Ibid.,  p.  52.  3  Ibid.,  p.  75.  4  Ibid.,  p.  76. 


216  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

7.  Doctor  Newsholme  quotes  with  approval  in  regard  to  the 
ignorance  of  mothers  the  following  statement  by  Doctor  Reid, 
county  medical  officer  for  Staffordshire  : 

Of  course  there  are  many  contributory  causes  of  excessive  infant  mortality, 
most  of  which  are  preventable,  but  there  is  one  which  far  exceeds  all  others 
in  potency,  namely,  the  prevailing  ignorance  among  mothers  as  to  the  proper 
feeding  of  infants.1 

An  American  authority  on  the  diseases  of  children  has  recently 
reiterated  this  conclusion  of  Doctor  Reid  :  "  It  is  generally  agreed 
that  fully  one  half  of  these  infant  deaths  could  be  prevented  by 
adequate  measures  of  relief.  In  proof  of  this  are  two  incontro- 
vertible facts  :  First,  the  death  rate  among  exclusively  breast-fed 
babies  is  comparatively  small.  Second,  the  death  rate  among 
artificially  fed  babies,  properly  cared  for  and  given  the  best  arti- 
ficial diet,  is  likewise  small.  Ignorance  on  the  part  of  the  mother 
is  perhaps  the  greatest  single  factor  in  this  annual  slaughter  of 
the  innocents."  2 

It  seems  only  reasonable  to  conclude  that  the  presence  of  the 
conditions  indicated  above  as  productive  of  a  high  infant  mortality 
are  amply  sufficient  to  account  for  the  high  mortality  of  the 
textile  cities  of  Massachusetts,  and  that  their  absence  in  the 
great  shoe  cities,  as  indicated  by  the  fact  that  the  proportion  of 
foreign-born  is  low,  the  illiteracy  of  the  female  population  insig- 
nificant, and  the  wages  in  the  dominant  industry  high,  accounts 
for  the  relatively  low  infant  mortality  rates  of  those  cities.  That 
these  factors  are  true  indices  of  generally  good  conditions  in  the 
latter  group  is  clearly  shown  by  their  general  death  rates.  Brock- 
ton, with  a  general  death  rate  of  only  13.20  in  1900,  was  by  far 
the  healthiest  city  of  its  size  in  the  entire  East,  and  but  27  of  all 
the  343  registration  cities  in  the  United  States  had  a  rate  equally 
low.  Lynn  also  had  a  comparatively  low  general  death  rate,  and 
Haverhill,  Marlboro,  North  Adams,  and  Waltham  have  all  been 

1  Thirty-ninth  Annual  Report  of  the  Local  Government  Board  of  Great  Britain, 
Supplement  on  Infant  and  Child  Mortality,  p.  101. 

-  J.  II.  Mason  Knox,  Jr.,  in  Journal  of the  American  Public  Health  Association, 
January,  1911,  p.  44. 


INFANT  MORTALITY  217 

well  below  the  average  general  death  rate  of  registration  cities 
for  many  years.1 

The  point  now  to  be  considered  is  the  English  experience  in 
regard  to  the  employment  of  married  women  in  extradomestic 
occupations.  It  has  been  repeatedly  emphasized  that  for  the 
cities  of  Massachusetts  accurate  figures  are  not  available,  and  in 
lieu  of  them  the  proportion  of  women  of  ten  years  and  over  in- 
dustrially employed  has  been  taken  as  an  index  of  the  signifi- 
cance of  this  factor. 

It  was  clearly  shown  that  the  statistics  for  the  32  cities  of 
Massachusetts  considered  in  detail  in  the  preceding  pages  in  no 
wise  bear  out  the  frequent  assumption  that  the  employment  of 
married  women  is  a  major  factor  in  determining  the  infant  death 
rate.  A  detailed  study  of  the  infant  mortality  in  Fall  River,  to 
which  reference  has  been  made,2  likewise  fails  to  support  this 
contention. 

In  Great  Britain  the  statement  of  Sir  John  Simon,  already 
quoted,  of  that  assumed  relationship  has  been  generally  accepted 
without  question  until  of  late  years.  The  Inter-Departmental  Com- 
mittee on  Physical  Deterioration,  however,  which  reported  in  1904, 
although  it  cited  much  evidence  which  maintained  its  accuracy 
was,  on  the  whole,  rather  noncommittal  in  its  report,  which  stated 
that  "though  the  facts  seem  to  point  to  a  strong  presumption 
that  it  [excessive  infant  mortality]  is  also  connected  with  the 
employment  of  mothers,  the  information  is  not  so  complete  as 
might  be  desired.3  In  1908,  in  commenting  upon  Doctor  Simon's 
statements,  Doctor  Newman  qualified  them  slightly  :  "  We  cannot 
now,  with  the  new  facts  and  experience  of  half  a  century  behind 
us,  wholly  subscribe  to  these  conclusions."  4  He  admitted  also  that 
certain  towns  with  a  high  infant  mortality  showed  a  low  propor- 
tion of  occupied  women,  and  pointed  out  the  complexity  of  the 
supposed  relationship  : 

1  See   Massachusetts    State  Board   of   Health   Report  for   1908,  p.  812,  and 
Twelfth  Census,  Vol.  Ill,  Part  I,  pp.  292-554. 

2  See  Part  II  of  this  volume  (6ist  Cong.  2d  Session,  Sen.  Doc.  No.  645). 

3  Report  of    the   Inter-Departmental    Committee   on    Physical   Deterioration, 
Vol.  I,  p.  45. 

4  Newman,  Infant  Mortality,  p.  98. 


21 8  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

But  the  mere  fact  of  extensive  employment  of  women,  and  particularly  of 
mothers  in  factories,  cannot  be  regarded  as  significant  of  itself.  To  gauge  the 
effect  of  such  employment  on  the  children  of  such  women,  reference  must  be 
made  to  some  of  the  following  factors  which  play  a  part  in  the  problem,  namely, 
(a)  the  character  and  condition  of  the  work,  (b)  the  length  of  hours,  (c)  employ- 
ment before  and  after  childbirth,  and  (d)  the  sanitation  of  factories  and  work- 
shops. To  these  also  should  be  added  the  variations  in  the  birth  rate  prevalent 
in  different  trades,  the  effect  of  certain  industries  upon  maternity  in  the  way 
of  raising  (if  such  be  possible)  or  reducing  the  standard  and  practice  of  mothers 
as  to  the  care  of  infants,  and,  lastly,  the  causes  of  the  mothers'  employment. 

Doctor  Newsholme,  in  a  detailed  analysis  of  the  infant  mortality 
statistics  of  England  and  Wales,  has  found  that  a  study  of  the 
industries  involved  confirms  the  conclusion  that  the  employment 
of  married  women  is  not  a  dominant  factor,  but  reaches  the 
reasonable  conclusion  that  because  it  is  not  the  greatest  cause  it 
does  not  follow  that  it  is  to  be  ignored. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  this  study,  in  indicating  that  the  em- 
ployment of  women  is  not  a  controlling  factor  in  determining  the 
infant  death  rates  of  the  cities  of  Massachusetts,  is  in  exact  agree- 
ment with  the  results  of  a  careful  analysis  of  English  statistics 
through  a  long  period. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  ETHICS  OF  POPULATION  POLICIES; 
NEO-MALTHUSIANISM 

Population  or  prosperity,  219.  —  American  views  on  population,  220.  —  Rapid 
settlement  and  disappearance  of  the  frontier,  221.  —  Estimates  of  future  popula- 
tion, 223.  —  Consequences  of  further  increase,  223.  —  Need  of  a  conservation  policy, 
225.  —  Conditions  of  progress,  226.  —  Neo-Malthusianism,  228  —  Bearing  of  the 
Malthusian  law  of  population  on  morality,  228.  —  The  desire  to  restrict  fertility, 
234.  —  The  need  of  Neo-Malthusianism,  236. 

18.  POPULATION  OR  PROSPERITY1 

The  question  posed  by  Mai  thus  refuses  to  be  ignored.  Again 
and  again  the  nations  are  forced  to  give  ear  to  it.  The  celebrated 
essay  in  1798  marked  the  boundary  between  two  eras  of  thought 
on  this  question.  Before  that  a  large  and  increasing  population 
was  generally  favored ;  since  that  date  it  has  never  ceased  to  be 
looked  upon  by  some  with  doubt  and  with  fear. 

The  contrast  between  the  two  eras,  however,  is  less  in  respect 
to  the  judgment  of  results  than  in  respect  to  the  criterion  by 
which  those  results  are  to  be  measured.  Before  Malthus  the 
criterion  was  the  prosperity  of  the  sovereign  and  of  the  ruling 
classes  ;  thereafter  it  became  the  welfare  of  the  increasing  masses. 
Unwittingly,  but  none  the  less  truly,  Malthus  set  before  the  eyes 
of  men  a  new  picture  of  the  humble  unit  of  population.  Instead 
of  the  man  with  the  hoe,  patient  taxpayer  and  soldier  of  the  king, 
frugal  workman  contributing  with  his  teeming  fellows  to  swell  the 
rents  of  landlords  and  the  profits  of  employers,  Malthus  helped 
the  world  to  see  the  human  individual,  striving  to  maintain  a 
family  and  to  win  the  joys  of  life,  but  finding  the  very  number 

1  By  Frank  A.  Fetter.  Adapted  from  The  American  Economic  Review  Supple- 
ment, Vol.  Ill,  No.  i  (March,  1913),  pp.  1-12,  17-19.  This  was  the  presidential 
address  at  the  1912  meeting  of  the  American  Economic  Association. 

219 


220  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  his  fellows  an  obstacle  in  the  way  toward  these  ends.  Before 
Malthus  population  was  a  question  either  of  political  or  of  com- 
mercial economy ;  with  him  it  began  to  be  a  question  of  social 
economy. 

These  statements  appear  paradoxical  when  one  recalls  that  the 
first  purpose  of  Malthus  was  to  dispel  the  illusory  hopes  of  social 
perfection.  His  proposition  that  population  has  a  fateful  tendency 
to  outstrip  the  production  of  food  was  used  to  condone  the  patent 
evils  of  existing  society.  His  doctrine  became  the  stock  argument 
to  discourage  plans  of  social  betterment.  This  may  all  be  granted. 
Our  purpose  is  not  to  praise  Malthus  but  to  appreciate  him.  In 
the  perspective  of  more  than  a  century  neither  the  conscious  pur- 
poses of  men  nor  the  immediate  applications  of  their  teachings 
are  usually  seen  to  have  determined  their  real  influence.  Malthus 
had  in  some  ways  a  narrow  outlook,  and  his  often  confused 
thought  gave  false  implications  to  the  main  truth  he  brought  to 
public  attention.  Yet  he  was  a  man  of  gentle  spirit,  far  from 
harsh  and  unsympathetic.  Approaching  the  question  solely  with 
the  purpose  of  the  student  without  political  or  commercial  bias, 
he  became  the  agent  in  advancing,  if  not  in  originating,  the 
humanitarian  and  democratic  treatment  of  the  population  problem. 
That  problem  is  to  determine  the  best  proportion  between  the 
number  of  inhabitants  and  the  area  and  resources  of  a  land,  judged 
with  reference  to  the  abiding  welfare  of  the  great  mass  of  the 
people  of  the  nation. 

American  views  on  population  were  from  the  first  unfriendly 
to  the  Malthusian  doctrine.  It  appeared  in  the  earlier  textbooks 
of  English  origin  or  written  under  English  influence,  and  as  a 
mere  classroom  abstraction  it  was  given  a  small  measure  of  curious 
attention.  But  in  any  of  its  forms  it  involved  an  opinion  adverse 
to  an  unrestrained  increase  of  population,  whereas  the  conditions 
in  America  made  such  an  idea  appear  false  as  theory  and  harm- 
ful in  practice.  A  growing  population  was  favorable  to  the  in- 
terests alike  of  landowners,  of  active  business  men,  of  the  rival 
sections,  and  of  the  national  government.  There  resulted  from 
this  economic  situation  a  peculiarly  American  optimism  on  the 
subject.  Density  of  population  as  an  influence  favorable  to  the 


THE  ETHICS  OF  POPULATION  POLICIES  221 

division  of  labor  and  to  the  economies  of  production  in  manu- 
facture was  looked  upon  as  in  itself  an  efficient  cause  in  increas- 
ing the  per  capita  income.  One  type  of  this  optimism,  exemplified 
by  Henry  George,  denied  on  principle  that  population  ever  could 
increase  too  much.  Another  type,  represented  by  Henry  Carey, 
held  that  population  in  fact  was  not  likely  to  increase  too  much 
in  America.  The  national  bias  often  led  to  crediting  to  Amer- 
ican character  all  of  the  benefits  resulting  from  exceptional  natural 
resources  combined  with  relative  scarcity  of  population.  This  bias 
and  this  reasoning  still  survive  among  us  to-day. 

Students  of  American  economic  conditions  are  familiar  with  the 
series  of  shaded  charts  in  the  Census  volumes  on  population 
showing  by  decades  the  extension  of  the  settled  area  since  1790 
and  its  gradually  increasing  density.  As  one  studies  the  earlier 
of  these  charts  one  can  see  how  the  blank  spaces  on  the  maps 
of  that  day  must  have  aroused  the  imagination  and  the  hopes  of 
men.  There  lay  whole  empires  of  land  almost  untenanted  and 
calling  to  be  used.  Decade  by  decade  for  a  hundred  years  the 
frontier  extended  at  a  hardly  slackening  rate  while  the  density 
increased  on  the  settled  area,  until  abruptly,  about  1890,  the 
process  ended  or  changed  its  nature.  The  chart  for  1900  shows 
little  alteration  in  its  outline  from  that  for  a  decade  earlier.  The 
increase  of  population  in  the  decade  had  been  13,000,000,  but 
of  these,  8,000,000  had  been  added  to  the  urban  and  only 
5,000,000  to  the  rural  population.  In  the  following  decade,  from 
1900  to  1910,  the  increase  was  16,000,000,  of  which  12,000,000 
were  added  to  the  urban  and  but  4,000,000  to  the  rural  popula- 
tion. Dividing  our  national  history  since  1790  into  four  periods, 
each  of  thirty  years,  it  is  seen  that  in  the  first  the  density  per 
mile  increased  .7  of  an  inhabitant,  in  the  second  2.4  inhabitants, 
in  the  third  9,  and  in  the  fourth  14.  Thus  the  increase  in  the 
number  per  square  mile  has  gone  on  at  an  accelerating  rate,  and 
was  twenty  times  as  fast  in  the  last  as  in  the  first  period.  As  an 
index  of  the  demands  which  increasing  population  makes  upon 
resources,  these  figures  are  more  truly  significant  than  are  the 
absolute  numbers  of  people  or  the  percentage  of  increase  by 
decades  ;  for  they  show  how  many  additional  inhabitants  must 


222  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

find  employment,  materials,  and  food  on  the  available  area.  This 
means  greater  intensiveness  of  utilization.  The  cumulative  addi- 
tions are  now  made  on  an  area  nearing,  or  already  past,  the  point 
of  maximum  advantage  to  the  masses  of  the  nation. 

By  1890  the  habitable  agricultural  area  of  the  United  States 
had  not  been  completely  occupied,  but  the  frontier  of  fertile  lands 
ready  for  man's  use  had  at  length  been  all  but  attained.  Suddenly 
was  unmasked  the  true  character  of  those  great,  uncolored  areas 
shown  on  the  map.  Deserts  they  are,  for  the  most  part,  deserts 
they  must  ever  remain.  Nature  had  no  more  free  gifts  to  dis- 
tribute to  the  prodigal  children  of  America.  She  would  grant 
still  some  new  arable  fields,  but  only  for  the  price  of  toil  and 
patient  art.  Our  increasing  population  must  thenceforth  find  its 
livelihood  in  the  more  intensive  cultivation  of  the  settled  areas. 
We  had  been  rapidly  losing  those  economic  advantages  which  had 
distinguished  us  from  the  older,  more  densely  settled  countries. 
A  new  economic  situation  confronted  our  people. 

Economic  results  did  not  long  delay  their  appearance.  In  the 
nineties  of  the  last  century  the  wave  of  popular  •  prosperity  at 
length  attained  its  crest.  Some  great  forces  lifting  wages  through- 
out Christendom  despite  any  counteracting  effects  from  increasing 
population  seem  at  last  to  have  spent  themselves.  Cheap  food 
from  America  had  been  a  boon  to  the  European  workman  as  well 
as  to  the  American.  The  year  1896  marked  the  lowest  American 
prices  in  recent  decades  for  food  and  for  farm  products.  The 
year  1898  was  that  of  maximum  export  of  foodstuffs  from  the 
United  States.  Since  1896  food  and  other  farm  products  have 
almost  steadily  advanced  in  price  at  a  more  rapid  rate  than  general 
prices ;  since  1 898  exports  of  foodstuffs  from  the  United  States 
have  less  steadily,  but  none  the  less  surely,  declined.  In  the  past 
twenty  years  the  general  progress  in  science  and  the  technical 
arts  has  been  phenomenal.  It  is  the  accepted  economic  belief  that 
the  trend  and  effect  of  such  changes  is  favorable  to  the  real  wages 
of  labor.  The  last  twenty  years,  therefore,  should  have  been  a 
period  of  rapidly  rising  wages  had  not  this  technical  progress  been 
offset  by  some  powerful  opposing  forces.  Why  have  real  wages 
risen  so  slowly  or  even  fallen  ?  In  part  no  doubt  the  explanation 


THE  ETHICS  OF  POPULATION  POLICIES  223 

may  be  found  in  the  fact  that  when  the  general  scale  of  prices  is 
rising  wages  move  more  tardily.  In  large  part  the  explanation/ 
must  be  found  in  the  fact  that  we  have  passed  the  point  of  dimin-l 
ishing  returns  in  the  relation  of  our  population  to  our  resources.! 
The  growth  of  population  is  serving  to  neutralize  for  the  masses 
of  the  people  the  gains  of  technical  progress.  It  is  high  time  to 
revise  the  optimistic  American  doctrine  of  population. 

The  public  is  accustomed  to  the  estimates  of  enormous  popu- 
lation possible  on  the  present  area  of  this  country.  These  esti- 
mates express  to  many,  perhaps  to  most  Americans,  not  only  the 
possible  but  also  the  inevitable  and  desirable  increase.  They  ask  : 
Why  should  not  an  area  almost  equal  to  that  of  Europe  support 
400,000,000  instead  of  one  fourth  that  number  ?  We  have  little 
more  than  thirty  inhabitants  per  square  mile.  France  and  Austria- 
Hungary  have  each  a  population  over  six  times  as  dense,  Switzer- 
land eight  times,  Germany  and  Italy  ten  times,  the  Netherlands 
fifteen  times,  and  Belgium  twenty-two  times.  We  have  but  to 
equal  Italy  to  support  a  population  of  a  billion.  We  have  but  to 
equal  Belgium  to  support  two  and  a  quarter  billions.  But  if  we 
could  conceivably  support  such  a  future  population  on  the  present 
area  it  would  be  in  what  manner,  with  what  gain  to  civilization 
and  at  what  cost  to  the  popular  welfare  ? 

Take  the  German  Empire  as  a  standard  of  comparison.  Despite 
the  great  material  advances  in  Germany  of  late,  the  real  wages 
of  the  working  people  are  much  below  those  in  America.  Who 
would  suggest  that  with  the  conditions  of  popular  thought  in 
America  we  could  calmly  contemplate  the  decline  of  wages  and 
of  the  standard  of  living  among  us  toward  those  of  the  German 
masses  to-day  ? 

The  Swiss  in  their  mountainous  land  with  a  population  four 
fifths  as  dense  as  that  of  Germany  are  achieving  quite  as  wonder- 
ful a  result.  Only  a  marvel  of  patient  industry  enables  the  Swiss 
to  draw  their  livelihood  from  such  an  area.  Watch  the  Swiss 
peasant  at  his  work  and  you  may  understand.  The  cattle  stand 
in  the  stable  while  the  peasant  cuts  their  food  and  brings  it  to 
them  lest  they  may  trample  down  the  precious  grass.  Man's 
labor  is  less  valuable  there  than  are  the  uses  of  that  little  patch 


224  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  land.  In  the  haying  season  the  harvester  clings  with  one  hand 
to  the  steep  mountain  side,  cutting  the  grass  by  the  handful  and 
piling  it  in  little  bunches  loaded  down  with  stones,  to  keep  it  from 
blowing  away,  until  it  can  be  carried  down  into  the  valley  on  the 
backs  of  men  and  women.  That  is  what  such  a  density  of  popu- 
lation means,  translated  into  terms  of  human  labor. 

Shall  Italy  be  our  population-ideal  ?  A  recent  well-known  trav- 
eler1 from  America  reports  the  ordinary  food  of  the  laborer  in 
Sicily  as  consisting  of  "  a  piece  of  black  bread  and  perhaps  a  bit 
of  soup  of  green  herbs  of  some  kind  or  other."  "  For  days  or 
months  the  peasants  live  on  almost  any  sort  of  green  thing  they 
find  in  the  fields,  frequently  eating  it  raw  just  like  the  cattle." 

In  the  light  of  such  facts,  the  flights  of  speculative  statistics 
regarding  the  possible  increase  of  our  population  evidence  a  for- 
getfulness  of  economic  principles  and  a  recklessness  of  economic 
consequences.  To  force  production  very  fast  or  far  on  a  given 
area  entails  some  notable  results.  Cultivation  must  become  in 
part  more  intensive,  with  hand  labor,  in  part  more  expensive,  with 
a  larger  investment  in  equipment  on  larger  farms. 

We  have  heard  much  of  late  the  appeal,  Back  to  the  land  ! 
As  a  plan  to  be  followed  by  masses  of  men  with  the  hope  of 
relieving  the  pressure  of  population  it  is  vain.  Every  time  one 
pair  of  hands  is  added  to  the  agricultural  population,  three  more 
mouths  are  added  to  the  city  population  waiting  to  consume  the 
products. 

America  has  no  exclusive  knowledge  of  mechanical  inventions 
and  no  exclusive  claim  to  their  use.  They  are  internationally 
patented  and  for  sale.  Whoever  finds  it  profitable  may  use  them. 
If  they  arc  used  less  in  other  countries  it  is  because  the  work  can 
be  done  more  cheaply  by  hand  under  their  conditions.  The  gen- 
eral level  of  the  use  of  machinery  is  largely  fixed  by  the  relations 
between  population  and  resources,  and  not  by  any  mysterious  racial 
talent  for  machinery.  It  is  the  density  of  population  that  mainly 
explains  the  contrast  in  this  regard  between  the  people  of  Europe 
on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  those  of  the  same  races  in 
America,  Canada,  and  Australia. 

1  15ooker  T.  Washington,  in  "The  Man  Farthest  Down,"  1912. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  POPULATION  POLICIES  225 

Popular  welfare  in  America  is  already  threatened.  To  preserve 
the  favorable  relation  of  population  to  resources  and  to  control  in 
some  measure  the  fate  and  fortunes  of  the  children  of  this  and 
future  generations  the  two  most  important  means  possible  are  : 
conservation  of  national  resources,  and  retarding  the  rate  of 
increase  of  population. 

For  the  conservation  movement,  that  sadly  belated  attempt  to 
check  national  prodigality,  let  us  speak  only  words  of  approval. 
But  we  must  recognize  its  limitations.  As  to  minerals,  it  only 
delays  their  inevitable,  final  exhaustion.  At  the.  present  rate  of 
increase  of  the  use  of  our  stores,  iron  ore  will  be  exhausted  in 
thirty  years,  petroleum  in  ninety  years,  and  coal  in  one  hundred 
fifty  years.  If,  however,  the  population  became  stationary,  the 
periods  of  possible  use  would  be  enormously  extended.  In  the 
reclamation  of  soil  by  drainage  and  irrigation  the  outlook  is  that 
about  1 5  per  cent  may  thus  be  added  ultimately  to  the  area  in 
farms,  representing  at  the  most  40  per  cent  addition  to  the  pres- 
ent food  production  by  present  methods.  Even  when  all  this  has 
been  accomplished  at  much  cost  it  provides  barely  for  two  decades 
of  increase  of  our  population  at  the  present  rate,  and  by  1930  the 
national  ^demand  for  food  will  again  be  in  the  same  relation  to  the 
productive  area  that  it  now  is. 

The  hope  is  ever  with  us  that  improvements  in  agricultural 
methods  will  offset  the  influence  of  the  increase  of  population. 
We  rightly  speak  of  the  wonders  of  the  new  agriculture  ;  but  these 
improvements  fast  crowding  upon  each  other  in  the  past  two 
decades  have  not  even  kept  the  cost  of  food  from  increasing  in 
terms  of  the  common  man's  wage.  Shall  we  then  base  an  eco- 
nomic policy  on  the  assumption  of  much  greater  improvements 
which  as  yet  are  only  in  the  realm  of  imagination  ?  Undoubtedly 
the  development  of  water  power  will  retard  the  trend  toward  higher 
prices  of  coal ;  forestry  will  eventually  grow  lumber  enough  to 
meet  the  greatly  curtailed  demand  at  higher  prices  ;  but,  given  a 
population  steadily  increasing  at  anything  like  the  present  rate, 
and  real  wages  in  America  must  decrease  in  terms  of  food,  cloth- 
ing, and  fuel,  and  all  the  commodities  dependent  on  wood,  iron, 
copper,  and  other  primary  materials.  The  steady  increase  alone 


226  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  population  will  offset  the  popular  benefits  of  the  new  miracles 
of  industrial  progress. 

The  percentual  rate  of  increase  of  population  in  the  United 
States  has  shown  a  general  downward  trend  since  the  Civil  War. 
Before  1860  it  had  been  steadily  near  35  per  cent  each  decade; 
between  1860  and  1890  it  ranged  between  30  and  23  per  cent; 
and  in  each  of  the  last  two  decades  it  has  been  about  21  per  cent. 
This  downward  trend  has  been  tardily  following  a  declining  birth 
rate.  Race  suicide,  however,  is  very  far  from  being  an  imminent 
peril  for  the  nation  as  a  whole.  The  real  occasion  for  disquietude 
is  that  this  phenomenon  is  so  largely  correlated  with  education 
and  with  eminent  attainment.  In  many  families  the  birth  rate  is 
much  too  high  for  the  welfare  of  the  parents,  of  the  children, 
and  of  the  community.  Recent  studies  among  city  populations 
have  demonstrated  that  as  the  number  of  births  in  a  family  passes 
a  moderate  limit  the  mortality  increases  inordinately. 

!Our  population  increased  between  1900  and  1910  nearly  six- 
teen million  people.  A  much  slower  rate  of  growth  would  realize 
the  common  prediction  of  a  quarter  billion  in  another  century,  and 
a  half  billion  in  two  centuries.  So  far  as  these  figures  are  based 
on  forecasts  of  "natural  increase"  (exclusive  of  immigratjpn),  they 
may  prove  to  be  largely  overestimated.  Changes  in  public  opinion, 
in  social  standards,  in  the  means  of  communication  and  of  education, 
in  industry,  and  in  family  relations,  are  in  rapid  progress.  Affect- 
ing wider  and  wider  circles,  these  influences  promise  to  strengthen 
greatly  the  forces  making  for  volitional  control  of  population.  The 
earlier  applications  of  the  doctrine  of  eugenics  probably  will  be  to 
control  the  increase  of  mental  and  of  physical  defectives.  These 
forces,  if  not  neutralized,  will  rapidly  reduce  the  rate  of  increase.1 

********** 
John  Stuart  Mill,  in  discussing  the  future  of  society  when  popu- 
lation might  be  expected  to  have  ceased  increasing,  employed  an 
already  current  term,  the  "  stationary  state."  The  phrase  is  hardly 
felicitous  for,  as  he  explained,  this  does  not  mean  a  society  station- 
ary in  the  industrial  arts  and  in  mental,  moral,  and  social  culture. 

1  The  author's  discussion  of  immigration  as  the  factor  neutralizing  the  declin- 
ing natural  increase  is  omitted.  —  Kn. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  POPULATION  POLICIES          227 

Indeed  it  was  just  such  a  condition  of  a  stationary  population  that 
he  deemed  the  ultimate  ideal  when  once  that  degree  of  density 
had  been  attained  which  made  possible  the  highest  level  of  the 
general  welfare.  The  theory  of  evolution  as  applied  to  social 
progress  has  suggested  that  a  certain  pressure  of  conflicting  and 
thwarted  desires  is  required  to  keep  a  people  industrious,  inven- 
tive, and  progressive.  The  crude  version  of  the  theory  implies 
the  necessity  of  competition  on  the  plane  of  physical  want  result- 
ing from  the  pressure  of  population.  A  subtler  conception  would 
place  this  competition  on  the  higher  plane  of  developing  desires 
made  possible  by  industrial  advance,  political  democracy,  popular 
education,  and  a  widening  horizon  of  thought.  A  large  part  of 
our  people  have  attained  that  stage  now,  and  the  cultural  circle 
is  ever  widening.  The  spur  of  progress  consists  of  the  felt  limi- 
tations of  incomes,  relative  to  expanding  desires,  rather  than  in 
the  pangs  of  hunger.  Once  the  spur  of  progress  was  objective, 
now  it  is  subjective. 

In  the  last  century  popular  education  and  ideals  were  rising  at 
the  same  time  that  a  rising  scale  of  wages  was  made  possible  by 
industrial  improvements  accompanying  the  development  of  great 
material  resources.  Yet  this  fortunate  union  of  events  did  not 
suffice  to  prevent  the  growth  of  discontent.  Popular  aspirations 
outstripped  material  progress.  Much  more  ominous  is  the  situa- 
tion now  that  the  pressure  of  population  in  America  is  beginning 
to  check  and  reverse  this  trend  of  the  popular  welfare.  Those 
who  profit  for  a  time  by  these  shifts  in  the  forces  of  distribution 
may  find,  like  those  who  benefited  by  slavery,  that  they  have 
bartered  the  peace  and  security  of  their  children  for  the  pleasures 
of  a  brief  season. 

The  common  man  in  our  democracy  has  at  stake  the  preser- 
vation of  the  advantages  of  our  broad  territory  and  bountiful 
resources.  The  only  factor  in  the  present  increase  of  population 
that  is  controllable  in  large  measure  by  legislative  action  is  immi- 
gration. Many  representatives  of  organized  labor,  though  moved 
by  more  immediate  considerations  than  those  here  presented,  favor 
limitation.  But  the  mass  of  the  workers,  diverted  by  false  counsels, 
traditional  sentiments,  and  racial  sympathies,  are  divided  on  the 


228  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

question.  Without  help  from  other  groups  of  citizens  the  laborers 
of  America  cannot  obtain  the  needed  legislation.  Whether  that 
help  will  be  progressively  granted  in  the  years  to  come  depends 
on  the  clearness  of  our  economic  judgments  and  on  the  strength 
of  our  patriotic  ideals.  Perhaps  those  ideals  are  not  clear  to  us. 
Would  we  have  the  level  of  the  popular  welfare  in  America  fall 
even  by  a  little  if  this  could  be  prevented  ?  Would  we  rival  other 
lands  rather  in  population  than  in  prosperity  ?  Would  we  wish 
to  gain  in  density  of  settlement  while  losing  in  that  largeness  of 
opportunity  and  of  outlook  which  makes  possible  the  traits  most 
distinctive  of  American  life  ?  Already  we  have  on  our  map  many 
cities  swarming  like  ant  hills,  the  delight  of  the  real  estate  specu- 
lator and  the  despair  of  true  friends  of  humanity.  Shall  it  be  our 
ideal  to  multiply  men  on  city  streets  and  in  smoking  suburbs, 
away  from  fields,  and  forests,  and  mountains  ;  or  shall  we  not 
rather  give  to  all  our  people  space  to  earn  an  ample  living  and 
to  live  an  ample  life,  worthy  of  our  democratic  ideal  ? 

19.    THE  BEARING  OF  THE  MALTHUSIAN  LAW  OF  POPULA- 
TION UPON  HUMAN  CONDUCT  AND  MORALS1 

This  preventive  check  [late  marriages]  would  doubtless  be  an 
effectual  one,  but  it  is  open  to  grave  and  fatal  objections,  and 
would  only  replace  one  set  of  evils  by  another.  If  late  marriage 
were  generally  practiced  the  most  melancholy  results  would  follow. 
The  more  marriage  is  delayed,  the  more  prostitution  spreads. 
It  is  necessary  to  gravely  remind  all  advocates  of  late  marriage 
that  men  do  not  and  will  not  live  single,  and  all  women,  and  all 
men  who  honor  women,  should  protest  against  a  teaching  which 
would  inevitably  make  permanent  that  terrible  social  evil  which  is 
the  curse  of  civilization,  and  which  condemns  numbers  of  unhappy 
creatures  to  a  disgraceful  and  revolting  calling.  Prostitution  is  an 
evil  which  we  should  strive  to  eradicate,  not  to  perpetuate,  and  late 
marriage,  generally  adopted,  would  most  certainly  perpetuate  it. 

1  hy  Annie  liesant.  Adapted  from  The  Law  of  Population,  its  Consequences, 
and  its  Hearing  upon  Human  Conduct  and  Morals,  pp.  27-31,37-46.  Freethought 
Publishing  (  ompany,  London. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  POPULATION  POLICIES  229 

The  evils  resulting  from  late  marriage  to  those  who  remain 
really  celibate,  must  not  be  overlooked  in  weighing  this  recom- 
mendation of  it  as  a  cure  for  the  evils  of  overpopulation.  Celibacy 
is  not  natural  to  men  or  to  women  ;  all  bodily  needs  require  their 
legitimate  satisfaction,  and  celibacy  is  a  disregard  of  natural  law. 
The  asceticism  which  despises  the  body  is  a  contempt  of  nature, 
and  a  revolt  against  her ;  the  morality  which  upholds  virginity  as 
the  type  of  womanly  perfection  is  unnatural ;  to  be  in  harmony 
with  nature,  men  and  women  should  be  husbands  and  wives, 
fathers  and  mothers,  and  until  nature  evolves  a  neuter  sex  celibacy 
will  ever  be  a  mark  of  imperfection. 

Fortunately,  late  marriage  will  never  be  generally  practiced  in 
any  community  ;  the  majority  of  men  and  women  will  never  con- 
sent to  remain  single  during  the  brightness  of  youth,  when 
passion  is  strongest  and  feelings  most  powerful,  and  to  marry 
only  when  life  is  half  over  and  its  bloom  and  its  beauty  have 
faded  into  middle  age.  But  it  is  important  that  late  marriage 
should  not  even  be  regarded  as  desirable,  for  if  it  became  an 
accepted  doctrine  among  the  thoughtful  that  late  marriage  was 
the  only  escape  from  overpopulation,  a  serious  difficulty  would 
arise ;  the  best  of  the  people,  the  most  careful,  the  most  provident, 
the  most  intelligent,  would  remain  celibate  and  barren,  while  the 
careless,  thoughtless,  thriftless  ones  would  marry  and  produce 
large  families  ;  this  evil  is  found  to  prevail  to  some  extent  even 
now  ;  the  more  thoughtful,  seeing  the  misery  resulting  from  large 
families  on  low  wage,  often  abstain  from  marriage,  and  have  to 
pay  heavy  poor-rates  for  the  support  of  the  thoughtless  and  their 
families.  The  preventive  check  proposed  by  Malthus  must 
therefore  be  rejected,  and  a  wiser  solution  of  the  problem  must 
be  sought. 

It  remains,  then,  to  ask  how  is  this  duty  to  be  performed  ? 
It  is  clearly  useless  to  preach  the  limitation  of  the  family,  and  to 
conceal  the  means  whereby  such  limitation  may  be  effected.  If 
the  limitation  be  a  duty,  it  cannot  be  wrong  to  afford  such 
information  as  shall  enable  people  to  discharge  it. 

Many  people,  perfectly  good-hearted,  but  somewhat  narrow- 
minded,  object  strongly  to  the  idea  of  conjugal  prudence,  and 


230  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

regard  scientific  checks  to  population  as  "a  violation  of  nature's 
laws,  and  a  frustration  of  nature's  ends."  Such  people,  a  hundred 
years  ago,  would  have  applauded  the  priest  who  objected  to  light- 
ning conductors  as  being  an  interference  with  the  bolts  of  Deity ; 
they  exist  in  every  age,  the  rejoicers  over  past  successes,  and  the 
timid  disapprovers  of  new  discoveries.  Let  us  analyze  the  argu- 
ment. "A  violation  of  nature's  laws";  this  objection  is  couched 
in  somewhat  unscientific  phrase ;  nature's  ".laws  "  are  but  the 
observed  sequences  of  events  ;  man  cannot  violate  them  ;  he  may 
disregard  them,  and  suffer  in  consequence  ;  he  may  observe  them, 
and  regulate  his  conduct  so  as  to  be  in  harmony  with  them. 
Man's  prerogative  is  that  by  the  use  of  his  reason  he  is  able  to 
study  nature  outside  himself,  and  by  observation  may  so  control 
nature,  as  to  make  her  add  to  his  happiness  instead  of  bringing 
him  misery.  To  limit  the  family  is  no  more  a  violation  of  nature's 
laws,  than  to  preserve  the  sick  by  medical  skill ;  the  restriction  of 
the  birth  rate  does  not  violate  nature's  laws  more  than  does  the 
restriction  of  the  death  rate.  Science  strives  to  diminish  the  pos- 
itive checks ;  science  should  also  discover  the  best  preventive 
checks.  "The  frustration  of  nature's  ends."  Why  should  we 
worship  nature's  ends  ?  Nature  flings  lightning  at  our  houses  ; 
we  frustrate  her  ends  by  the  lightning  conductor.  Nature  divides 
us  by  seas  and  by  rivers  ;  we  frustrate  her  ends  by  sailing  over 
the  seas,  and  by  bridging  the  rivers.  Nature  sends  typhus  fever 
and  ague  to  slay  us  ;  we  frustrate  her  ends  by  purifying  the  air, 
and  by  draining  the  marshes.  Oh  !  it  is  answered,  you  only  do 
this  by  using  other  natural  powers.  Yes,  we  answer,  and  we  only 
teach  conjugal  prudence  by  balancing  one  natural  force  against 
another.  Such  study  of  nature,  and  such  balancing  of  natural 
forces,  is  civilization. 

It  is  next  objected  that  preventive  checks  are  "unnatural"  and 
"immoral."  "Unnatural"  they  are  not;  for  the  human  brain  is 
nature's  highest  product,  and  all  improvements  on  irrational  nature 
are  most  purely  natural  ;  preventive  checks  are  no  more  unnatural 
than  every  other  custom  of  civilization.  Raw  meat,  nakedness, 
living  in  caves,  these  are  the  irrational  natural  habits  ;  cooked 
food,  clothes,  houses,  these  are  the  rational  natural  customs. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  POPULATION  POLICIES  231 

Production  of  offspring  recklessly,  carelessly,  lustfully,  this  is 
irrational  nature,  and  every  brute  can  here  outdo  us ;  production 
of  offspring  with  forethought,  earnestness,  providence,  this  is 
rational  nature,  where  man  stands  alone.  But  "immoral."  What 
is  morality  ?  It  is  the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number.  It 
is  immoral  to  give  life  where  you  cannot  support  it.  It  is  immoral 
to  bring  children  into  the  world  when  you  cannot  clothe,  feed,  and 
educate  them.  It  is  immoral  to  crowd  new  life  into  already  over- 
crowded houses,  and  to  give  birth  to  children  wholesale  who  never 
have  a  chance  of  healthy  life.  Conjugal  prudence  is  most  highly 
moral,  and  "those  who  endeavor  to  vilify  and  degrade  these 
means  in  the  eyes  of  the  public,  and  who  speak  of  them  as 
'immoral'  and  'disgusting,'  are  little  aware  of  the  moral  re- 
sponsibility they  incur  thereby.  As  already  shown,  to  reject  pre- 
ventive intercourse  is  in  reality  to  choose  the  other  three  true 
population  checks  —  poverty,  prostitution,  and  celibacy.  So  far 
from  meriting  reprobation,  the  endeavor  to  spread  the  knowledge 
of  the  preventive  methods,  of  the  great  law  of  nature  which  ren- 
ders them  necessary,  is  in  my  opinion  the  very  greatest  service 
which  can  at  present  be  done  to  mankind." 

But  the  knowledge  of  these  scientific  checks  would,  it  is  argued, 
make  vice  bolder,  and  would  increase  unchastity  among  women 
by  making  it  safe.  Suppose  that  this  were  so,  it  might  save  some 
broken  hearts  and  some  deserted  children  ;  men  ruin  women  and 
go  scatheless,  and  then  bitterly  object  that  their  victims  escape 
something  of  public  shame.  And  if  so,  are  all  to  suffer,  so  that 
one  or  two,  already  corrupt  in  heart,  may  be  preserved  from 
becoming  corrupt  in  act  ?  Are  mothers  to  die  slowly  that  impure 
women  may  be  held  back,  and  wives  to  be  sacrificed,  that  the 
unchaste  may  be  curbed  ? 

An  extraordinary  confusion  exists  in  some  minds  between  pre- 
ventive checks  and  infanticide.  People  speak  as  though  prevention 
were  the  same  as  destruction.  But  no  life  is  destroyed  by  the 
prevention  of  conception,  any  more  than  by  abstention  from  mar- 
riage ;  if  it  is  infanticide  for  every  man  and  woman  not  to  produce 
as  many  children  as  possible  during  the  fertile  period  of  life,  if 
every  person  in  a  state  of  celibacy  commits  infanticide  because 


232  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  the  potential  life  he  prevents,  then,  of  course,  the  prevention 
of  conception  by  married  persons  is  also  infanticide ;  the  two 
things  are  on  exactly  the  same  level.  When  conception  has  taken 
place,  then  prevention  is  no  longer  possible,  and  a  new  life  having 
been  made,  the  destruction  of  that  life  would  be  criminal.  Before 
conception  no  life  exists  to  be  destroyed  ;  the  seminal  fluid  is 
simply  a  secretion  of  the  body;  its  fertilizing  power,  is  not  a  liv- 
ing thing,  the  non-use  of  which  destroys  life  ;  the  spermatozoa,  the 
active  fertilizing  agents,  are  not  living  existences,  and  "they  have 
been  erroneously  considered  as  proper  animalculae  "  (Carpenter). 
Life  is  not  made  until  the  male  and  female  elements  are  united,  and 
if  this  is  prevented,  either  by  abstention  from  intercourse  among 
the  unmarried,  or  by  preventive  intercourse  among  the  married, 
life  is  not  destroyed,  because  the  life  is  not  yet  in  existence. 

Leaving  objectors,  let  us  look  at  the  other  side  of  the  question. 
The  system  of  preventive  checks  to  population  points  us  to  the 
true  pathway  of  safety ;  it  is  an  immediate  relief,  and  at  once 
lightens  the  burden  of  poverty.  Each  married  couple  have  it  in 
their  power  to  avoid  poverty  for  themselves  and  for  their  chil- 
dren, by  determining,  when  they  enter  on  married  life,  that  they 
will  not  produce  a  family  larger  than  they  can  comfortably  main- 
tain :  thus  they  avoid  the  daily  harass  of  domestic  struggle  ;  they 
rejoice  over  two  healthy,  robust,  well-fed  children,  instead  of 
mourning  over  seven  frail,  sickly,  half-starved  ones  ;  they  look 
forward  to  an  old  age  of  comfort  and  of  respectability  instead  of 
one  of  painful  dependence  on  a  grudgingly  given  charity. 

It  is  well  worthy  of  notice  that  those  who  have  pleaded  for 
scientific  checks  to  population  have  also  been  those  who  have 
been  identified  with  the  struggle  for  political  and  religious  free- 
dom ;  Carlile.  defended  the  use  of  such  —  as  advocated  in  his 
"Every  \Yoinan's  Book"  —as  follows: 

There  are  four  grounds  on  which  my  "  Every  Woman's  Book  "  and  its 
recommendation  can  be  defended,  and  each  of  them  in  itself  sufficient  to  jus- 
tify the  publication,  and  to  make  it  meritorious.  First  —  the  political  or  national 
ground ;  which  refers  to  the  strength  and  wealth  of  the  nation,  and  the  great- 
est happiness  of  the  greatest  number  of  the  people.  Second  —  the  local  or 
commercial  ground,  or  the  ground  of  the  wages  of  labor,  and  its  supply  in  the 


THE  ETHICS  OF  POPULATION  POLICIES  233 

several  trades  and  districts.  Third  —  the  domestic  or  family  ground,  where 
the  parents  may  think  they  have  already  children  enough,  and  that  more  will 
be  an  injury.  Fourth  — the  individual  ground,  where  the  state  of  health  in  the 
female,  or  her  situation  in  life,  will  not  justify  a  pregnancy ;  but  where  the  ab- 
stinence from  love  becomes  as  great  an  evil.  It  has  been  a  sort  of  common, 
but  ill-judged  maxim,  that  the  strength  and  wealth  of  a  nation  consist  in  the 
number,  the  greatest  number,  of  its  people.  The  error  in  the  judgment  of  the 
maxim  is,  in  not  taking  into  consideration  whether  that  number  be  well  or  ill 
employed,  well  or  ill  fed,  clothed  and  housed.  If  the  number  be  well  employed, 
well  fed,  well  clothed,  well  housed,  then  the  greatness  of  the  number  is  in 
reality  the  wealth  and  strength  of  the  nation.  But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
greatness  of  the  number  lessens  the  means  of  good  employment,  good  living, 
clothing,  and  housing,  then,  as  in  England  and  Ireland,  at  this  moment,  under 
the  present  arrangements  of  government,  aristocracy,  religion,  etc.,  the  great- 
ness of  the  number  constitutes  the  weakness  of  the  nation  ;  and  England  and 
Ireland  are  both  weak  at  this  moment :  weak,  too  evidently  weak,  from  ill- 
employed  or  unemployed  members  of  the  people.  It  is  objected  to  me,  that 
there  is  a  sufficiency  of  natural  checks  already  in  existence,  to  remedy  the  evils 
of  which  I  complain.  My  answer  is,  that  these  natural  checks  are  the  evil  of 
which  I  do  complain,  and  'which  I  seek  to  remove  by  tJie  substitution  of  a 
MORAL  CHECK,  that  shall  furnish  no  pain,  no  degradation,  no  discomfort, 
no  evil  of  any  kind.  The  existing  natural  or  physical  checks  are  disease  or 
pestilence  and  famine.  Surely  it  is  to  be  desired  that  neither  of  these  should 
exist.  It  is  not  wise,  not  parental,  not  kind,  to  breed  children  to  such  disasters. 
It  is  better  that  they  should  not  be  born,  than  be  cut  off  prematurely  by  disease 
or  famine,  or  struggle  through  a  life  of  disease,  poverty,  and  misery,  a  life  of 
pain  to  themselves,  and  both  a  pain  and  burthen  to  their  parents.  The  existing 
moral  checks  on  numbers  are  war,  and  social  arrangements,  such  as  poverty, 
late  marriages,  celibacy,  and  the  bad  health  which  bad  states  of  living  pro- 
duce ;  to  which  may  be  added,  states  of  servitude,  in  which  marriage  is  found 
inconvenient.  These  are  all  so  many  evils  —  all  will  say.  It  would  be  well  to 
go  on  without  war,  and  the  time  will  come  when  wars  will  cease.  In  the  ques- 
tion of  trade,  a  government  can  do  nothing  more  than  remove  impediments. 
It  cannot  increase  the  amount  of  trade  beyond  its  natural  demand.  It  cannot 
force  trade  to  any  permanent  utility.  Therefore  I  take  it  to  be  a  clear  point, 
that  no  change  in  government  will  do  anything  permanently  for  the  relief  of 
the  present  number  of  persons  employed  in  surplus  production.  In  limiting 
the  number  of  children,  as  applicable  to  such  a  case,  there  is  a  double  relief ; 
an  immediate  relief  to  the  parents,  in  not  incurring  expenses  which  cannot  be 
well  met,  and  a  remote  relief,  in  not  bringing  forth  new  laborers,  when  those  ex- 
isting cannot  find  employment.  Besides,  there  is  something  cruel,  wanton,  base, 
and  parentally  unfeeling,  in  the  principle  that  says :  "  I  will  bring  all  the  children 
I  can  into  the  world,  and  if  I  cannot  maintain  them  some  other  persons  who 
care  nothing  about  them  must,  or,  which  is  the  real  alternative,  they  may  starve." 


234  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

I  20.   THE  DESIRE  TO  RESTRICT  FERTILITY1 

The  desire  to  keep  fertility  within  such  limits  as  each  one  for 
himself  deems  reasonable  has  generally  been  characteristic  of  a 
decadent  state  of  society.  It  must  not  be  assumed  to  have  had  its 
origin  in  modern  times,  for  the  contrary  is  thoroughly  well  estab- 
lished by  history ;  nor  is  it,  in  modern  times,  peculiar  to  the  State 
into  whose  social  condition,  in  respect  of  population,  it  has  been 
our  special  duty  to  inquire.  Though  we  have  found  that  the  free 
play  given  to  this  desire  has  been  the  main  factor  in  the  decline 
of  birth  rate  in  New  South  Wales,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that 
in  all  the  countries,  including  France,  England,  and  the  United 
States,  where  a  decline  of  natural  increase  due  to  scarcity  of 
births  has  been  studied,  the  prominence  of  the  same  factor  has 
been  recognized. 

Witnesses  one  after  another,  in  the  course  of  this  inquiry, 
have  testified  to  the  exercise  of  this  desire  ;  they  have  also  re- 
ferred to  the  readiness,  and  even  spontaneity,  of  married  people 
in  admitting  a  deliberate  restriction  in  the  number  of  their  chil- 
dren by  recourse  to  artificial  checks.  In  addition  to  this,  we  recog- 
nize that  there  may  be  a  certain  number  of  instances  in  which 
the  restraint  of  natural  impulse  is  effective  in  marriage  as  well 
as  in  postponing  marriage.  The  reason  almost  invariably  given 
by  people  for  restricting  procreation  is  that  they  cannot  conven- 
iently afford  to  rear  more  than  a  certain  number  of  children. 
In  some  instances  we  believe  the  people  are  sincere  in  stating 
this  as  their  reason  ;  and  that  they  honestly,  though  mistakenly, 
believe  want  of  adequate  means  to  be  a  sufficient  justification  for 
interference  with  the  course  of  nature.  The  witnesses  themselves, 
however,  suggest  that,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  this  is  not  the 
true  reason  ;  they  say  that  there  are  : 

1.  An    unwillingness   to   submit    to    the   strain   and    worry    of 
children  ; 

2.  A  dislike  of  the  interference  with  pleasure  and  comfort  in- 
volved in  childbearing  and  childrearing ; 

1  From  the  Report  of  the  Royal  Commission  on  the  Decline  of  the  Birth  Rate 
and  on  the  Mortality  of  Infants  in  New  South  Wales,  Sydney,  1904,  Vol.  I,  pp.  16-17. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  POPULATION  POLICIES  235 

3.  A  desire  to  avoid  the  actual  physical  discomfort  of  gestation, 
parturition,  and  lactation  ;  and 

4.  A  love  of  luxury  and  of  social  pleasures,  which  is  increasing. 
It  will  be  seen  that  the  reasons  given  for  resorting  to  limitation 

have  one  element  in  common,  namely,  selfishness.1  They  are,  in 
fact,  indicative  of  the  desire  of  the  individual  to  avoid  his  obli- 
gations to  the  community ;  and  they  serve  to  exemplify  the  obser- 
vation that  "the  effort  of  the  race  towards  its  increase  in  numbers 
is  in  inverse  ratio  to  the  effort  of  the  individual  towards  his  per- 
sonal development."  They  are  the  same  kind  of  reasons  as 
might  be  expected  to  be  given  in  any  community  where  the 
phenomenon  of  the  voluntary  limitation  of  the  size  of  families  is 
observed. 

The  question,  however,  has  presented  itself  to  us,  why,  during 
the  last  twenty  years  or  so,  the  avoidance  of  procreation  in  New 
South  Wales  should  have  become  so  prevalent  as  to  materially 
reduce  the  birth  rate.  The  answer  seems  to  us  to  be,  not  so 
much  that  the  future  prospects  for  the  rising  generation  are 
unfavorable,  as  some  have  suggested ;  but  that  the  restraints 
which  previously  operated  against  the  desire  to  regulate  the  size 
of  families  have  lately  been  either  weakened  or  removed.  These 
restraints,  we  consider,  have  been  mainly  of  two  kinds :  first,  reli- 
gious feeling,  which,  we  think,  formerly  actuated  a  larger  pro- 
portion of  the  people ;  and,  second,  ignorance  of  the  means  of 
accomplishing  the  desire.  In  regard  to  the  latter  we  see  that, 
during  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century,  a  wave  of  pop- 
ular feeling  spread  over  a  great  part  of  the  civilized  world,  favor- 
able to  the  individual  control  of  the  size  of  families  ;  and  with  it 
there  has  been  a  general  diffusion  of  the  knowledge  of  methods 
by  which  restriction  might  be  accomplished  which  previously  was 
wanting.  The  history  of  this  movement  is  matter  of  common 
knowledge.  Despite  Malthus's  repudiation,  early  in  the  century, 
of  artificial  checks  to  the  growth  of  population,  these  checks  soon 
had  their  advocates  ;  and,  towards  the  end  of  the  third  quarter  of 
the  century,  a  prominent  school  of  writers  on  social  subjects 

1  It  is  worthy  of  note  that  the  members  of  the  Commission  were  all 
men.  —  ED. 


236  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

arose,  with  Charles  Bradlaugh  and  Annie  Besant  as  its  chief 
exponents,  who  thought  they  saw  in  the  limitation  of  families  a 
means  of  alleviating  the  burdens  of  poverty.  Since  then  the  fol- 
lowers of  this  school  have  availed  themselves,  in  times  and  places 
of  prosperity  and  plenty,  of  the  instructions  intended  by  the  Neo- 
Malthusians  only  for  the  very  poor,  with  the  result  that  marriage 
rates  and  birth  rates  have  diverged  in  many  parts  of  the  world. 
This  propaganda  of  limitation  of  families  was  followed  by  a  traf- 
fic in  the  materials  used  for  the  purpose  of  prevention,  which,  in 
its  turn,  has  encouraged  the  popular  tendency,  and  brought  facil- 
ities for  prevention  within  the  knowledge  and  reach  of  a  very 
large  proportion  of  the  community.  In  due  course  these  doctrines 
and  this  branch  of  commerce  established  themselves  in  Australia, 
and  their  introduction  and  extension  have  been  concomitant  with  the 
commencement  and  acceleration  of  the  decline  of  the  birth  rate. 

21.    THE  ETHICS  OF  NEQ-MALTHUSIANISM 1 

The  second  great  channel 2  through  which  the  impulse  towards 
the  control  of  procreation  for  the  elevation  of  the  race  is  entering 
into  practical  life  is  by  the  general  adoption,  by  the  educated 
classes  of  all  countries  —  and  it  must  be  remembered  that,  in  this 
matter  at  all  events,  all  classes  are  gradually  beginning  to  become 
educated  —  of  methods  for  the  prevention  of  conception  except 
when  conception  is  deliberately  desired.  It  is  no  longer  permis- 
sible to  discuss  the  validity  of  this  control,  for  it  is  an  accom- 
plished fact  and  has  become  a  part  of  our  modern  morality.  "  If 
a  course  of  conduct  is  habitually  and  deliberately  pursued  by  vast 
multitudes  of  otherwise  well-conducted  people,  forming  probably 
a  majority  of  the  whole  educated  class  of  the  nation,"  as  Sidney 
Webb  rightly  puts  it,  "we  must  assume  that  it  does  not  conflict 
with  their  actual  code  of  morality."  3 

1  By  TIavelock  Ellis.  Adapted  from  Sex  in  Relation  to  Society,  pp.  5^8-593. 
I-".  A.  I>avis  Company.  Philadelphia,  1913. 

-  The  first  is  "  the  growing  sense  of  sexual  responsibility  among  women  as 
well  as  men.''  —  Ki>. 

3  Sidney  Webb,  I\'f<nlar  Sfit'ncc  Monthly,  1906,  p.  526  (previously  published 
in  the  J.onJcn  Times,  October  i  i,  and  October  16,  1906). 


THE  ETHICS  OF  POPULATION  POLICIES 


-57 


From  time  to  time  many  energetic  persons  have  noisily  de- 
manded that  a  stop  should  be  put  to  the  decline  of  the  birth  rate, 
for,  they  argue,  it  means  "  race  suicide."  It  is  now  beginning  to 
be  realized,  however,  that  this  outcry  was  a  foolish  and  mischiev- 
ous mistake.  It  is  impossible  to  walk  through  the  streets  of  any 
great  city,  full  of  vast  numbers  of  persons  who,  obviously,  ought 
never  to  have  been  born,  without  recognizing  that  the  birth  rate  is 
as  yet  very  far  above  its  normal  and  healthy  limit.  The  greatest 
States  have  often  been  the  smallest  so  far  as  mere  number  of 
citizens  is  concerned,  for  it  is  quality  not  quantity  that  counts. 
And  while  it  is  true  that  the  increase  of  the  best  types  of  citizens 
can  only  enrich  a  State,  it  is  now  becoming  intolerable  that  a 
nation  should  increase  by  the  mere  dumping  down  of  procreative 
refuse  in  its  midst.  It  is  beginning  to  be  realized  that  this  process 
not  only  depreciates  the  quality  of  a  people  but  imposes  on  a  State 
an  inordinate  financial  burden. 

It  is  now  well  recognized  that  large  families  are  associated  with 
degeneracy,  and,  in  the  widest  sense,  with  abnormality  of  every 
kind.  Thus,  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  men  of  genius  tend  to  / 
belong  to  very  large  families,  though  it  may  be  pointed  out  to 
those  who  fear  an  alarming  decrease  of  genius  from  the  tendency 
to  the  limitation  of  the  family,  that  the  position  in  the  family  ^ 
most  often  occupied  by  the  child  of  genius  is  the  first-born.1  The  ' 
insane,  the  idiotic,  imbecile,  and  weak-minded,  the  criminal,  the 
epileptic,  the  hysterical,  the  neurasthenic,  the  tubercular,  all,  it 
would  appear,  tend  to  belong  to  large  families.2  It  has,  indeed,  been 
shown  by  Heron,  Pearson,  and  Goring,  that  not  only  the  eldest- 
born,  but  also  the  second-born,  are  specially  liable  to  suffer  from 
pathological  defect  (insanity,  criminality,  tuberculosis).  There  is, 
however,  it  would  seem,  a  fallacy  in  the  common  interpretation  of 
this  fact.  According  to  Van  den  Velden  (as  quoted  in  Sc.vual- 
Problcme,  May,  1909,  p.  381),  this  tendency  is  fully  counterbal- 
anced by  the  rising  mortality  of  children  from  the  first-born 

1  See  Havelock  Ellis,  A  Study  of  British  Genius,  pp.  n  5-120. 

2  See,  e.g..  Havelock  Ellis,  op.  cit.,  p.  110;   Toulouse,  Les  Causes  cle  la  Folie, 
p.  91  :    Harriet  Alexander,  "  Malthusianism  and  Degeneracy,"  Alienist  and  Xenrol- 
ogist,  January,  1901. 


238  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

onward.  The  greater  pathological  tendency  of  the  earlier  children 
is  thus  simply  the  result  of  a  less  stringent  selection  by  death.  So 
far  as  they  show  any  really  greater  pathological  tendency,  apart 
from  this  fallacy,  it  is  perhaps  due  to  premature  marriage.  There 
is  another  fallacy  in  the  frequent  statement  that  the  children  in 
small  families  are  more  feeble  than  those  in  large  families.  We 
have  to  distinguish  between  a  naturally  small  family,  and  an  arti- 
ficially small  family.  A  family  which  is  small  merely  as  the  result 
of  the  feeble  procreative  energy  of  the  parents  is  likely  to  be  a 
feeble  family  ;  a  family  which  is  small  as  the  result  of  the  deliber- 
ate control  of  the  parents,  shows,  of  course,  no  such  tendency. 

The  demand  of  national  efficiency  thus  corresponds  with  the 
demand  of  developing  humanitarianism,  which,  having  begun  by 
attempting  to  ameliorate  the  conditions  of  life,  has  gradually  be- 
gun to  realize  that  it  is  necessary  to  go  deeper  and  to  ameliorate 
life  itself.  For  while  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  much  may  be 
done  by  acting  systematically  on  the  conditions  of  life,  the  more 
searching  analysis  of  evil  environmental  conditions  only  serves  to 
show  that  in  large  parts  they  are  based  in  the  human  organism 
itself  and  were  not  only  prenatal,  but  preconceptional,  being 
involved  in  the  quality  of  the  parental  or  ancestral  organisms. 

Putting  aside,  however,  all  humanitarian  considerations,  the 
serious  error  of  attempting  to  stem  the  progress  of  civilization 
in  the  direction  of  procreative  control  could  never  have  occurred 
if  the  general  tendencies  of  zoological  evolution  had  been  under- 
stood, even  in  their  elements.  All  zoological  progress  is  from  the 
more  prolific  to  the  less  prolific ;  the  higher  the  species  the  less 
fruitful  are  its  individual  members.  The  same  tendency  is  found 
within  the  limits  of  the  human  species,  though  not  in  an  invari- 
able straight  line  ;  the  growth  of  civilization  involves  a  diminution 
in  fertility.  This  is  by  no  means  a  new  phenomenon ;  ancient 
Rome  and  later  Geneva,  "  the  Protestant  Rome,"  bear  witness  to 
it ;  no  doubt  it  has  occurred  in  every  high  center  of  moral  and 
intellectual  culture,  although  the  data  for  measuring  the  tendency 
no  longer  exist.  When  we  take  a  sufficiently  wide  and  intelligent 
survey,  we  realize  that  the  tendency  of  a  community  to  slacken  its 
natural  rate  of  increase  is  an  essential  phenomenon  of  all  advanced 


THE  ETHICS  OF  POPULATION  POLICIES  239 

civilization.  The  more  intelligent  nations  have  manifested  the 
tendency  first,  and  in  each  nation  the  more  educated  classes  have 
taken  the  lead,  but  it  is  only  a  matter  of  time  to  bring  all  civilized 
nations,  and  all  social  classes  in  each  nation,  into  line.  This 
movement,  we  have  to  remember  —  in  opposition  to  the  ignorant 
outcry  of  certain  would-be  moralists  and  politicians  —  is  a  benefi- 
cent movement.  It  means  a  greater  regard  to  the  quality  than  to 
the  quantity  of  the  increase ;  it  involves  the  possibility  of  combat- 
ing successfully  the  evils  of  high  mortality,  disease,  overcrowding, 
and  all  the  manifold  misfortunes  which  inevitably  accompany  a  too 
exuberant  birth  rate.  For  it  is  only  in  a  community  which  increases 
slowly  that  it  is  possible  to  secure  the  adequate  economic  adjust- 
ment and  environmental  modifications  necessary  for  a  sane  and 
wholesome  civic  and  personal  life.1  If  those  persons  who  raise 
the  cry  of  "  race  suicide  "  in  face  of  the  decline  of  the  birth  rate 
really  had  the  knowledge  and  intelligence  to  realize  the  manifold 
evils  which  they  are  invoking  they  would  deserve  to  be  treated 
as  criminals. 

REFERENCES  2 

POPULATION  AND  VITAL  STATISTICS 

BAILEY,  W.  B.,  Modern  Social  Conditions,  1906. 

BOWLEY,  A.  L.,  Elements  of  Statistics,  1901. 

MAYO-SMITH,  R.,  Statistics  and  Sociology,  1902. 

*NEWSHOLME,  A.,  Vital  Statistics,  3d  edition,  1 899. 

*Annual  Reports  of  the  Registrar-General  for  England  and  Wales. 

Thirteenth  United  States  Census  (1910)  Abstract,  pp.  21-262. 

THEORIES  OF  POPULATION  AND  POPULATION  POLICIES 
Pre-Malthusian  theories  : 

For  an  excellent  brief  treatment  of  the  Mercantilists  and  Cameralists,  see 
L.  H.  Haney,  History  of  Economic  Thought,  1911. 

SMALL,  A.  W.,  The  Cameralists,  1909. 

STAXGELAND,  C.  E.,  Pre-Malthusian  Doctrines  of  Population.  Columbia 
University  Studies  in  History,  Economics,  and  Public  Law,  Vol.  XXI, 
1904. 

1  I  have  developed  these  points  more  in  detail  in  two  articles  in  the  Independent 
Review,  November,   1903,  and  April,   1904.    See  also  liushee,  "  The   Declining 
Birth  Rate  and  its  Causes,"  Popular  Science  Monthly,  August,  1903. 

2  Starred  references  are  those,  in  each  section,  which  are  worthy  first  attention 
in  additional  reading. 


240  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

The  MaJthusian  theory  : 

*Bo\AK,  J.,  Malthus  and  his  Work,  1885  ;  especially  chaps,  i  and  ii. 
*BUDGE,  S.,  Das  Malthus'sche  Bevolkerungsgesetz  und  die  theoretische 

Nationaloekonomie  dcr  letzten  Jahrzehnte,  1912. 
CAXXAN,  E..  Theories  of  Production  and  Distribution,  2d  edition  (1905), 

chap.  v. 
FETTER,  F.,  The  Essay  of  Malthus,  a  Centennial  Review.    Yale  Review, 

Vol.  VII  (1898-1899),  pp.  143-167. 
HANKY,  L.  H.,  History  of  Economic  Thought,  chap.  xi. 
MALTHUS,  T.  R.,  An  Essay  on  the  Principle  of  Population.    Any  edition 

after  the  fifth  gives  Malthus's  thought  as  he  finally  left  it.    A  valuable 

and  convenient  abridged  edition  is  W.  J .  Ashley's  Parallel  Chapters  of 

the  first  and  second  editions  of  the  Essay,  1895. 

THE  BIRTH  RATK 

*ELUS,  H.,  The  Task  of  Social  Hygiene  (1912),  chap.  v. 

HEROX,  D.,  On  the  Relation  of  Fertility  in  Man  to  Social  Status,  1906. 

KufZVXSKi,  R.  R.,  The  Fecundity  of  the  Native-  and  Foreign-born  Pop- 
ulation of  Massachusetts.  Quarterly  Journal  oj 'Economics,  Vol.  XVI 
(1901),  pp.  1-36,  141-186. 

*NE\VSHOLME,  A.,  The  Declining  Birth  Rate,  191  r. 

*PEARSOX,  K.,  The  Problem  of  Practical  Eugenics,  2d  edition,  1912. 

TAUSSIG,  F.  W.,  Principles  of  Economics  (191  i ),  Vol.  II,  chap.  liii. 

WILLCOX,  W.,  The  Change  in  the  Proportion  of  Children  in  the  United 
States  and  in  the  Birth  Rate  in  France  during  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury. Publications  of  tJie  American  Statistical  Association,  Vol.  XII 
(1911).  pp.  49°-499- 

YOUXG,  A.  A.,  The  Birth  Rate  in  New  Plampshire.  J^iiblications  of  the 
American  Statistical  Association,  Vol.  IX  (1904-1905),  pp.  263—292. 

United  States  Immigration  Commission,  Report  on  the  Fecundity  of 
Immigrant  Women,  1912. 

INFANT  MORTALITY 

*NE\V.\IAX,  (I.,  Infant  Mortality,  a  Social  Problem,  1906. 

*TiiKi,i's,  E.  B.,  A  Statistical  Survey  of  Infant  Mortality's  Urgent  Call 

for  .Action.    I'lil'Iications  of  tlic  American  Statistical  Association, 

December,   KHO,  pp.  341-359. 
Proceedings   of   the    Fifteenth    International   Congress  on    Hygiene  and 

Demography,  1913.  Vol.  VII. 
Report   on    the   Condition   of  Women   and    Child  Wage-Earners    in    the 

United  States,  Vol.  XVIII,  Infant  Mortality  and  its   Relation  to  the 

Employment  of  Mothers  (6ist  Cong.,  2d  Session,  Sen.  Doc.  No.  645). 
Reports  of  the  American  Association  for  the  Study  and  Prevention  of 

Infant  Mortality  (Baltimore). 


THE  ETHICS  OF  POPULATION  POLICIES  241 

*Publications  of  the  United  States  Children's  Bureau.  See  especially 
Monograph  No.  i,  Birth  Registration  in  the  United  States.  Also 
Infant  Mortality  Series,  No.  3,  Infant  Mortality  in  Johnstown,  Pa.,  by 
Emma  Duke. 

POPULATION  AND  SOCIALISM 

*BEBEL,  A.,  Woman  under  Socialism  (translated  from  the  33d  German 

edition,  1904),  pp.  355-371. 
*KAUTSKY,  K.,  Vermehrung  und  Entwicklung  in  Natur  und  Gesellschaft, 

1910. 

*MARX,  K.,  Capital,  Vol.  I,  chap,  xxv,  sections  1-3. 
WELLS,  H.  G.,  New  Worlds  for  Old,  1908.    (Advocates  pensions  for  all 

mothers.) 
WELLS,  H.  G.,  Socialism  and  the  Family,  1908. 

EUGENICS 

*L)AVENPORT,  C.  B.,  Heredity  in  Relation  to  Eugenics,  1911. 
*ELLIS,  H.,  The  Task  of  Social  Hygiene  (1912),  chap.  vi. 
ELLIS,  H.,  Sex  in  Relation  to  Society  (191 1),  chap.  xii. 
GALTON,  F.,  Hereditary  Genius,  1869. 

GALTON,  F.,  Essays  in  Eugenics  (1909),  especially  "Eugenics,  its  Defini- 
tion, Scope,  and  Aims."   This  essay  may  also  be  found  in  the  American 
Journal  of  Sociology,  July,  1904,  pp.  1-6. 
GODDARD,  H.  H.,  The  Kallikak  Family,  1912. 

*GODDARD,  H.  H.,  Feeblemindness,  its  Causes  and  Consequences,  1914. 
*KELLICOTT,  W.  E.,  The  Social  Direction  of  Human  Evolution,  1911. 
PEARSON,  K.,  The  Problem  of  Practical  Eugenics,  2d  edition,  1912. 
PEARSON,  K.,  The  Groundwork  of  Eugenics,  2d  edition,  1912. 
PEARSON,  K.,  Nature  and  Nurture,  2d  edition,  1913. 
*Eugenics :  Twelve  University  Lectures,  by  various  authors,  1914. 

While  sex  education  and  sex  hygiene  (wrongly  called  social  hygiene)  are 
not  strictly  speaking  a  part  of  eugenics,  their  relation  to  it  is  so  important 
that  a  few  references  may  be  of  value. 

ADDAMS,  JANE,  A  New  Conscience  and  an  Ancient  Evil,  1912. 
ELLIS,  HAVELOCK,  Sex  in  Relation  to  Society  (1913),  chap.  ii. 
ELLIS,  HAVELOCK,  Task  of  Social  Hygiene  (1912),  chaps,  viii,  ix. 
FLEXNER,  A.,  Prostitution  in  Europe,  1914. 
FOSTER,  W.  T.,  The  Social  Emergency:    Studies  in  Sex  Hygiene  and 

Morals,  1914. 
GOLDMARK,  PAULINE,  and  ASSOCIATES,  Boyhood  and  Lawlessness,  1914. 

The  Neglected  Girl,  1914. 

KNEELAND,  G.  J.,  Commercialized  Prostitution  in  New  York  City,  1913. 
LITTELTON,  E.,  Training  of  the  Young  in  the  Laws  of  Sex,  1906. 
MORROW,  P.  A.,  Social  Diseases  and  Marriage,  1904. 


BOOK  II 
IMMIGRATION 

CHAPTER  VII 

ECONOMIC  FACTORS 

Causes  of  European  emigration,  243.  —  The  industrial  significance  of  recent  im- 
migration, 264.  —  Recent  expansion  of  American  industry,  264.  —  Reasons  for  the 
employment  of  recent  immigrants,  268.  —  Industrial  communities,  271.  —  Salient 
characteristics  of  the  immigrant  labor  supply,  274.  —  Effect  of  immigrant  compe- 
tition on  the  American  workman,  278.  —  Racial  displacements  in  industry,  281. — 
Immigration  and  labor  organizations,  297.  —  Effect  of  immigration  upon  indus- 
trial organization  and  methods,  309. —  Working  relations,  312.  —  Wages  and 
hours  of  work,  312.  —  Establishment  of  new  industries,  313. — -Annual  earnings 
of  immigrant  families,  315.  —  Occupations  of  the  first  and  second  generations  of 
immigrants,  317.  —  The  occupational  distribution  of  the  labor  supply,  319. — 
Influence  of  immigration  upon  the  native  American  birth  rate,  321. 

[Population  problems  in  the  United  States  are  made  more  com- 
plicated and  perhaps  more  difficult  of  practical  solution  than  else- 
where because  of  the  heterogeneity  of  our  racial  composition.  So 
long  as  we  continue  to  be  a  grain-exporting  country,  and  so  long 
as  intensive  farming  has  made  no  more  progress  than  hitherto 
in  this  country,  we  cannot  be  said  to  be  facing  any  immediate 
danger  of  overpopulation.  But  the  decreasing  exports  of  food- 
stuffs, the  actual  decreasing  productivity  of  vast  areas  of  our  soil, 
and  the  rising  expense  of  living,  to  say  nothing  of  the  more  local 
problems  of  congestion  of  recent  immigrant  stocks  in  the  cities 
and  industrial  communities  of  the  northeastern  states,  give  room 
for  consideration  of  the  history  of  immigration,  both  with  regard 
to  its  amount  and  to  its  character,  and  for  a  careful  comparison  of 
the  economic  and  social  efficiency  of  the  older  and  the  newer 
racial  stocks  represented  in  the  immigration  statistics. 

242 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  243 

A  great  deal  of  attention  has  been  centered  upon  the  social  and 
political  effects  of  immigration,  the  relative  contribution  of  for- 
eign- and  native-born  to  crime,  pauperism,  delinquency,  and  polit- 
ical corruption,  as  well  as  upon  the  treatment  of  the  immigrant 
during  transit  and  after  arrival  in  this  country.  These  are  all 
matters  of  great  importance,  either  to  the  immigrant  or  to  the 
country  as  a  whole,  but  the  foundation  for  a  proper  understanding 
of  the  immigration  problem,  and  for  its  practical  solution,  lies  in 
a  knowledge  of  industrial  conditions  and  economic  forces  as  influ- 
enced by  immigration.  The  kernel  of  the  problem  is  the  economic 
standard  of  living  and  its  maintenance  and  elevation.  The  simple, 
universally  recognized  fact  is  that  where  low  wages,  lack  of  organi- 
zation, poor  housing,  overcrowding,  and  poor  food  are  found  there 
exist  also  alcoholism,  political  corruption,  low  physical,  intellectual, 
and  moral  standards,  and  social  stagnation.  If  immigration  tends 
to  raise  the  economic  standard  of  living  of  the  masses  in  this 
country,  it  is  a  beneficial  movement ;  if  it  tends  to  lower  the  eco- 
nomic standard  or  to  prevent  its  rise,  it  must  be  considered  funda- 
mentally detrimental  to  the  social  and  political,  as  well  as  to  the 
economic,  destinies  of  the  country.] 

22.    CAUSES  OF  EMIGRATION  FROM  EUROPE1 
PRIMARY  CAUSES 

The  present  movement  of  population  from  Europe  to  the 
United  States  is,  with  few  exceptions,  almost  entirely  attributable 
to  economic  causes.  Emigration  due  to  political  reasons  and,  to  a 
less  extent,  religious  oppression,  undoubtedly  exists,  but  even  in 
countries  where  these  incentives  prevail  the  more  important  cause 
is  very  largely  an  economic  one.  This  does  not  mean,  however, 
that  emigration  from  Europe  is  now  an  economic  necessity.  At 
times  in  the  past,  notably  during  the  famine  years  in  Ireland, 
actual  want  forced  a  choice  between  emigration  and  literal  starva- 
tion, but  the  present  movement  results,  in  the  main,  simply  from 

1  Adapted  from  Report  of  the  United  States  Immigration  Commission  on 
Emigration  Conditions  in  Europe  (6ist  Cong.,  3d  Session,  Sen.  Doc.  No.  748), 
1911,  pp. 53-67. 


244  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

a  widespread  desire  for  better  economic  conditions  rather  than 
from  the  necessity  of  escaping  intolerable  ones.  In  other  words 
the  emigrant  of  to-day  comes  to  the  United  States  not  merely  to 
make  a  living,  but  to  make  a  better  living  than  is  possible  at  home. 

With  comparatively  few  exceptions  the  emigrant  of  to-day  is 
essentially  a  seller  of  labor  seeking  a  more  favorable  market.  To 
a  considerable  extent  this  incentive  is  accompanied  by  a  certain 
spirit  of  unrest  and  adventure  and  a  more  or  less  definite  ambi- 
tion for  general  social  betterment,  but  primarily  the  movement  is 
accounted  for  by  the  fact  that  the  reward  of  labor  is  much  greater 
in  the  United  States  than  in  Europe. 

The  desire  to  escape  military  service  is  also  a  primary  cause  of 
emigration  from  some  countries,  but  on  the  whole  it  is  relatively 
unimportant.  It  is  true,  moreover,  that  some  emigrate  to  escape 
punishment  for  crime,  or  the  stigma  which  follows  such  punish- 
ment, while  others  of  the  criminal  class  deliberately  seek  sup- 
posedly more  advantageous  fields  for  criminal  activity.  The 
emigration  of  criminals  of  this  class  is  a  natural  movement  not 
altogether  peculiar  to  European  countries  and,  although  vastly 
important  because  dangerous,  numerically  it  affects  but  little  the 
tide  of  European  emigration  to  the  United  States. 

In  order  that  the  chief  cause  of  emigration  from  Europe  may 
be  better  understood,  the  Commission  has  given  considerable 
attention  to  economic  conditions  in  the  countries  visited,  with  par- 
ticular reference  to  the  status  of  emigrating  classes  in  this  regard. 
It  was  impossible  for  the  commissioners  personally  to  make  more 
than  a  general  survey  of  this  subject,  but  because  an  understand- 
ing of  the  economic  situation  in  the  chief  immigrant-furnishing 
countries  is  essential  to  an  intelligent  discussion  of  the  immigra- 
tion question,  the  results  of  the  Commission's  investigation  in 
this  regard  have  been  supplemented  by  official  data  or  well- 
authenticated  material  from  other  sources. 

The  purely  economic  condition  of  the  wageworker  is  generally 
very  much  lower  in  Europe  than  in  the  United  States.  This  is 
especially  true  of  the  unskilled-laborer  class,  from  which  so  great 
a  proportion  of  the  emigration  to  the  United  States  is  drawn. 
Skilled  labor  also  is  poorly  paid  when  compared  with  returns  for 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  245 

like  service  in  the  United  States,  but  the  opportunity  for  continual 
employment  in  this  field  is  usually  good  and  the  wages  sufficiently 
high  to  lessen  the  necessity  of  emigration.  A  large  proportion  of 
the  emigration  from  southern  and  eastern  Europe  may  be  traced 
directly  to  the  inability  of  the  peasantry  to  gain  an  adequate  liveli- 
hood in  agricultural  pursuits,  either  as  laborers  or  proprietors. 
Agricultural  labor  is  paid  extremely  low  wages,  and  employment 
is  quite  likely  to  be  seasonal  rather  than  continuous. 

In  cases  where  peasant  proprietorship  is  possible  the  land  hold- 
ings are  usually  so  small,  the  methods  of  cultivation  so  primitive, 
and  the  taxes  so  high  that  even  in  productive  years  the  struggle 
for  existence  is  a  hard  one,  while  a  crop  failure  means  practical 
disaster  for  the  small  farmer  and  farm  laborer  alike.  In  agrarian 
Russia,  where  the  people  have  not  learned  to  emigrate,  a  crop 
failure  results  in  a  famine,  while  in  other  sections  of  southern  and 
eastern  Europe  it  results  in  emigration,  usually  to  the  United 
States.  Periods  of  industrial  depression  as  well  as  crop  failures 
stimulate  emigration,  but  the  effect  of  the  former  is  not  so  pro- 
nounced for  the  reason  that  disturbed  financial  and  industrial  con- 
ditions in  Europe  are  usually  coincidental  with  like  conditions  in 
the  United  States,  and  at  such  times  the  emigration  movement 
is  always  relatively  smaller. 

The  fragmentary  nature  of  available  data  relative  to  wages  in 
many  European  countries  makes  a  satisfactory  comparison  with 
wages  in  the  United  States  impossible.  Unfortunately,  too,  these 
data  are  missing  for  countries  which  are  now  the  chief  sources  of 
European  emigration  to  the  United  States.  It  is  possible,  how- 
ever, to  show  the  relative  wages  and  hours  of  labor  at  a  compara- 
tively recent  date  in  some  leading  occupations  in  the  United 
States,  Great  Britain,  Germany,  and  France,  and  as  the  economic 
status  of  wageworkers  is  much  higher  in  the  three  latter  countries 
than  in  southern  and  eastern  European  countries  the  approximate 
difference  between  wages  in  such  countries  and  in  the  United 
States  may  be  inferred. 


246 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


WAGES  AND  HOURS  OF  LABOR  IN  LEADING  OCCUPATIONS 

IN  THE  UNITED  STATES,  GREAT  BRITAIN,  GERMANY,  AND 

FRANCE,  1903 

[Compiled  from  Bulletin  of  the  United  States  Bureau  of  Labor,  No.  54,  pp.  1120-1125] 


OCCUPATION 

WAGES  I'ER  HOUR  IN 

HOURS  PER  WEEK  IN 

United 
States 

Great 
Britain 

Ger- 
many 

France 

United 
States 

Great 
Britain 

Ger- 
many 

France 

Blacksmiths.     .     .     . 

$0.30 

$0.i; 

$0.12 

$0.16 

56.56 

53-67 

60.19 

60.19 

Boiler  makers  .    .     . 

.28 

•I? 

.11 

•15 

56.24 

53-67 

6o.OO 

61.50 

Bricklayers  .... 

•55 

.21 

•13 

•!3 

47-83 

5I-83 

56.50 

63.00 

Carpenters    .... 

•36 

.20 

•13 

•15 

49.46 

5°-J7 

55-3° 

6o.OO 

Compositors     .     .     . 

•45 

.18 

.14 

•13 

49.81 

50.00 

51.08 

6o.OO 

Hod  carriers     .     .    . 

.29 

•J3 

.08 

.IO 

47.98 

5I-83 

59-5° 

63.91 

Iron  molders    .     .     . 

•3° 

•17 

•13 

56.80 

53-67 

6o.OO 

Laborers  

.17 

.10 

.08 

.IO 

t;6.2Q 

<;2.t;o 

«;6.-?6 

6o.OO 

Machinists    .... 

.27 

•17 

•13 

•T3 

56.12 

53-67 

60.OO 

61.50 

Painters    

-.  - 

.18 

.1  2 

•  i  i 

48.89 

EII.OO 

c6.2c; 

6o.OO 

Plumbers  

.dS 

.20 

.1  I 

.1  c 

48.01 

40-17 

56.68 

M.oo 

Stonecutters     .     .     . 

.42 

.20 

.12 

.14 

48.67 

50.17 

54-oo 

60.00 

Stonemasons     .     .     . 

.46 

.21 

•13 

.14 

49-54 

5°-  J  7 

56-50 

66.00 

In  the  above  table  the  figures  for  the  United  States  cover  a 
wide  area,  representing  the  smaller  as  well  as  the  larger  centers 
of  industry,  while  those  for  the  European  countries  were  taken  in 
two  or  three  of  the  larger  centers  of  industry  in  each  country. 

As  before  stated,  there  arc  available  but  little  official  data  rela- 
tive to  wages  in  southern  and  southeastern  Europe,  but  it  is  a 
well-known  fact  that  they  are  very  much  lower  there  than  in 
Great  Britain,  Germany,  or  Erance.  The  Commission  found  this 
to  be  true  in  the  portions  of  Italy,  Austria-Hungary,  Greece, 
Turkey,  Russia,  and  the  Balkan  States  visited.  In  fact,  it  may 
safely  be  stated  that  in  the  latter  countries  the  average  wage  of 
men  engaged  in  common  and  agricultural  labor  is  less  than 
50  cents  per  day,  while  in  some  sections  it  is  even  much  lower. 
It  is  true  that  in  some  countries  agricultural  laborers  receive  from 
employers  certain  concessions  in  the  way  of  fuel,  food,  etc.,  but  in 
cases  of  this  nature  which  came  to  the  attention  of  the  Commission 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  247 

the  value  of  the  concessions  was  insufficient  to  materially  affect 
the  low  wage  scale. 

It  is  a  common  but  entirely  erroneous  belief  that  peasants  and 
artisans  in  Europe  can  live  so  very  cheaply  that  the  low  wages 
have  practically  as  great  a  purchasing  power  as  the  higher  wages 
in  the  United  States.  The  low  cost  of  living  among  the  working 
people  of  Europe,  and  especially  of  southern  and  eastern  Europe, 
is  due  to  a  low  standard  of  living  rather  than  to  the  cheapness  of 
food  and  other  necessary  commodities.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  meat 
and  other  costly  articles  of  food  which  are  considered  as  almost 
essential  to  the  everyday  table  of  the  American  workingman  can- 
not be  afforded  among  laborers  in  like  occupations  in  southern 
and  eastern  Europe. 

Notwithstanding  the  bad  economic  conditions  surrounding  the 
classes  which  furnish  so  great  a  part  of  the  emigration  from  south- 
ern and  eastern  Europe,  the  Commission  believes  that  a  laudable 
ambition  for  better  things  than  they  possess  rather  than  a  need 
for  actual  necessities  is  the  chief  motive  behind  the  movement  to 
the  United  States.  Knowledge  of  conditions  in  America,  promul- 
gated through  letters  from  friends  or  by  emigrants  who .  have 
returned  for  a  visit  to  their  native  villages,  creates  and  fosters 
among  the  people  a  desire  for  improved  conditions  which,  it  is 
believed,  can  be  attained  only  through  emigration.  Unfortunately, 
but  inevitably,  the  returned  emigrant,  in  a  spirit  of  braggadocio, 
is  inclined  to  exaggerate  his  economic  achievements  in  America. 
In  consequence,  some  whose  emigration  is  influenced  by  these 
highly  colored  statements,  accompanied  perhaps  by  a  display  of 
what  to  them  seems  great  wealth,  are  doomed  to  disappointment. 
The  latter,  however,  naturally  hesitate  to  admit  their  failures,  and 
consequently  there  is  little  to  disturb  the  belief  prevailing  in  south- 
ern and  eastern  Europe  that  success  awaits  all  who  are  able  to 
emigrate  to  the  United  States. 


248  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

POLITICAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  CAUSES 

It  is  the  opinion  of  the  Commission  that,  with  the  exception  of 
some  Russian  and  Roumanian  Hebrews,  relatively  few  Europeans 
emigrate  at  the  present  time  because  of  political  or  religious  con- 
ditions. It  is  doubtless  true  that  political  discontent  still  influences 
the  emigration  movement  from  Ireland,  but  to  a  less  degree  than 
in  earlier  years.  The  survival  of  the  Polish  national  spirit  un- 
doubtedly is  a  determining  factor  in  the  emigration  from  Ger- 
many, Russia,  and  Austria  of  some  of  that  race,  while  dissatisfaction 
with  Russian  domination  is  to  a  degree  responsible  for  Finnish 
emigration.  In  all  probability  some  part  of  the  emigration  from 
Turkey  in  Europe,  Turkey  in  Asia,  as  well  as  from  the  Balkan 
States,  is  also  attributable  to  political  conditions  in  those  coun- 
tries. There  is,  of  course,  a  small  movement  from  nearly  every 
European  country  of  political  idealists  who  prefer  a  democracy  to 
a  monarchial  government,  but  these,  and  in  fact  all,  with  the 
exception  of  the  Hebrew  peoples  referred  to,  whose  emigration 
is  in  part  due  to  political  or  religious  causes,  form  a  very  small 
portion  of  the  present  European  emigration  to  the  United  States. 

CONTRIBUTORY  CAUSES 

Contributory  or  immediate  causes  of  emigration  were  given  due 
t /consideration  by  the  Commission.  Chief  of  these  causes  is  the 
advice  and  assistance  of  relatives  or  friends  who  have  previously 
emigrated.  Through  the  medium  of  letters  from  those  already  in 
the  United  States  and  the  visits  of  former  emigrants,  the  emi- 
grating classes  of  Europe  are  kept  constantly,  if  not  always  reli- 
ably, informed  as  to  labor  conditions  here,  and  these  agencies  are 
by  far  the  most  potent  promoters  of  the  present  movement  of 
population. 

The  Commission  found  ample  evidence  of  this  fact  in  every 
country  of  southern  and  eastern  Europe.  Of  the  two  agencies 
mentioned,  however,  letters  are  by  far  the  most  important.  In 
fact,  it  is  entirely  safe  to  assert  that  letters  from  persons  who  have 
emigrated  to  friends  at  home  have  been  the  immediate  cause  of 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  249 

by  far  the  greater  part  of  the  remarkable  movement  from  south- 
ern and  eastern  Europe  to  the  United  States  during  the  past 
twenty-five  years.  There  is  hardly  a  village  or  community  in 
southern  Italy  and  Sicily  but  what  has  contributed  a  portion  of  its 
population  to  swell  the  tide  of  emigration  to  the  United  States, 
and  the  same  is  true  of  large  areas  of  Austria,  Hungary,  Greece, 
Turkey,  and  the  Balkans.  There  is  a  tendency  on  the  part  of 
emigrants  from  these  countries  to  retain  an  interest  in  the  home- 
land, and  in  consequence  a  great  amount  of  correspondence 
passes  back  and  forth.  It  was  frequently  stated  to  members  of 
the  Commission  that  letters  from  persons  who  had  emigrated  to 
America  were  passed  from  hand  to  hand  until  most  of  the  emi- 
grant's friends  and  neighbors  were  acquainted  with  the  contents. 
In  periods  of  industrial  activity,  as  a  rule,  the  letters  so  circulated 
contain  optimistic  references  to  wages  and  opportunities  for  em- 
ployment in  the  United  States,  and  when  comparison  in  this 
regard  is  made  with  conditions  at  home  it  is  inevitable  that  whole 
communities  should  be  inoculated  with  a  desire  to  emigrate.  The 
reverse  is  true  during  seasons  of  industrial  depression  in  the 
United  States.  At  such  times  intending  emigrants  are  quickly 
informed  by  their  friends  in  the  United  States  relative  to  con- 
ditions of  employment,  and  a  great  falling  off  in  the  tide  of 
emigration  is  the  immediate  result. 

In  an  unpublished  report  to  the  Bureau  of  Immigration  Inspec- 
tors Dobler  and  Sempsey,  who,  as  elsewhere  stated,  visited  Europe 
in  1906,  refer  to  the  "effect  produced  in  peasant  villages  by  the 
receipt  of  letters  from  America  containing  remittances  of  perhaps 
$60  to  $100  .  .  .  .  The  cottage  of  the  recipient  becomes  at  once 
the  place  to  which  the  entire  male  population  proceeds,  and  the 
letters  are  read  and  reread  until  the  contents  can  be  repeated  word 
for  word.  When  instances  of  this  kind  have  been  multiplied  by 
thousands,  it  is  not  difficult  to  understand  what  impels  poor  people 
to  leave  their  homes." 

The  word  comes  again  and  again  that  "work  is  abundant  and 
wages  princely  in  America."  In  an  Italian  village  near  Milan  the 
Immigration  Bureau's  inspectors  found  an  English-speaking  peas- 
ant acting  as  receiver  and  distributer  of  letters  from  America. 


250  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Letters  are  sent  from  village  to  village  by  persons  having  friends 
in  the  United  States,  and  one  letter  may  influence  in  this  way  a 
score  of  peasants.  The  comment  of  another  peasant  who  circu- 
lated letters  from  "  American  "  friends  is  significant :  "  We  all 
like  America;  it  gives  us  good  cheer  to  think  about  it."  The 
effect  of  such  a  state  of  mind  is  obvious. 

Emigrants  who  have  returned  for  a  visit  to  their  native  land 
are  also  great  promoters  of  emigration.  This  is  particularly  true 
of  southern  and  eastern  European  immigrants,  who,  as  a  class, 
make  more  or  less  frequent  visits  to  their  old  homes.  Among  the 
returning  emigrants  are  always  some  who  have  failed  to  achieve 
success  in  America,  and  some  who  through  changed  conditions  of 
life  and  employment  return  in  broken  health.  It  is  but  natural 
that  these  should  have  a  slightly  deterrent  effect  on  emigration, 
but  on  the  whole  this  is  relatively  unimportant,  for  the  returning 
emigrant,  as  a  rule,  is  one  who  has  succeeded  and,  as  before 
stated,  is  inclined  to  exaggerate  rather  than  minimize  his  achieve- 
ments in  the  United  States.  In  times  of  industrial  inactivity  in  the 
United  States  the  large  number  of  emigrants  who  return  to  their 
native  lands,  of  course,  serve  as  a  temporary  check  to  emigration, 
but  it  is  certain  that  in  the  long  run  such  returning  emigrants  actu- 
ally promote  rather  than  retard  the  movement  to  the  United  States. 

The  investigators  of  the  Bureau  of  Immigration  were  impressed 
by  the  number  of  men  in  Italy  and  in  various  Slavic  communities 
who  speak  English  and  who  exhibit  a  distinct  affection  for  the 
United  States.  The  unwillingness  of  such  men  to  work  in  the 
fields  at  25  to  30  cents  a  day ;  their  tendency  to  acquire  property ; 
their  general  initiative  ;  and,  most  concretely,  the  money  they  can 
show,  make  a  vivid  impression.  They  are  dispensers  of  informa- 
tion and  inspiration,  and  are  often  willing  to  follow  up  the  inspi- 
ration by  loans  to  prospective  emigrants. 

The  Commission  was  informed  that  one  third  of  the  emigrants 
from  Syria  return  for  a  time  to  their  native  country  and  later  go 
back  to  the  United  States  ;  but  that  in  the  meantime  many  of  them 
build  houses  much  superior  to  those  of  their  neighbors  and* by 
such  evidence  of  prosperity  add  to  the  desire  for  emigration  among 
their  countrymen.  A  man  who  left  a  little  village  in  Transylvania 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS 


251 


in  1904  with  the  proceeds  of  the  sale  of  two  head  of  cattle  came 
back  two  years  later  with  $500,  and  was  the  source  of  a  genuine 
fever  of  emigration  among  his  acquaintances,  which  has  increased 
ever  since.  It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  young  men  of  spirit 
and  ambition  should  want  to  emulate  successful  friends,  and  one 
can  easily  feel  the  truth  of  a  statement  made  by  a  large  land  pro- 
prietor to  the  Royal  Italian  Agricultural  Commission,  elsewhere 
referred  to  :  "  Emigration  is  spontaneous.  It  becomes  like  a  con- 
tagious disease.  Even  the  children  speak  of  going  to  America." 

The  importance  of  the  advice  of  friends  as  an  immediate  cause 
of  emigration  from  Europe  is  also  indicated  by  the  fact  that 
nearly  all  European  immigrants  admitted  to  the  United  States 
are,  according  to  their  own  statements,  going  to  join  relatives  or 
friends.  The  United  States  immigration  law  provides  that  infor- 
mation upon  this  point  be  secured  relative  to  every  alien  coming 
to  the  United  States  by  water. 

Nearly  95  per  cent  of  the  total  number  of  European  immi- 
grants admitted  to  the  United  States  during  the  two  years  under 
consideration  had  been  preceded  by  relatives  or  friends  whom  they 
expected  to  join.  Only  one  race  —  the  Spanish,  with  66.7  per  cent 
—  falls  greatly  below  the  average  in  this  regard.  The  percentage 
of  persons  going  to  join  relatives  or  friends  is  greater  among  the 
newer  immigration  from  the  south  and  east  of  Europe  than 
among  the  elder  immigrant  races  from  northern  and  western 
European  countries.  The  difference  between  the  two  groups  in 
this  regard  is  shown  in  the  following  table  : 

EUROPEAN  IMMIGRANTS  (INCLUDING  SYRIAN)  GOING  TO  JOIN 
RELATIVES  OR  FRIENDS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  DURING  THE 

FISCAL  YEARS  1908  AND  1909,  BY  CLASS 
[Compiled  from  reports  of  the  United  States  Commissioner  General  of  Immigration] 


CLASS 

TOTAL 

NUMBER 

GOING  TO  JOTN  RELATIVES  OR  FRIENDS 

Number 

Per  cent 

Old  immigra 
New  immigr 

tion    

442,653 
1,023,050 

395-944 
992,366 

89.4 
97.0 

ation  

Total  . 

1,465,703 

1,388,310 

94-7 

252  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

The  above  table  not  only  indicates  a  very  general  relationship 
between  admitted  immigrants  and  those  who  follow,  but  it  sug- 
gests forcibly  that  emigration  from  Europe  proceeds  according  to 
well-defined  individual  plans  rather  than  in  a  haphazard  way. 

The  investigation  of  the  Commission  in  Europe  did  not  dis- 
close that  actual  contracts  involving  promises  of  employment 
between  employers  in  the  United  States  and  laborers  in  Europe 
were  responsible  for  any  very  considerable  part  of  the  present 
emigration  movement.  It  will  be  understood,  however,  that  this 
statement  refers  only  to  cases  where  actual  bona  fide  contracts 
between  employers  and  laborers  exist  rather  than  to  so-called 
contract-labor  cases,  as  defined  in  the  sweeping  terms  of  the 
United  States  immigration  law,  which  classifies  as  such  all  per- 
sons "  who  have  been  induced  or  solicited  to  migrate  to  this 
country  by  offers  or  promises  of  employment  or  in  consequence 
of  agreements,  oral,  written,  or  printed,  express  or  implied,  to  per- 
form labor  in  this  country  of  any  kind,  skilled  or  unskilled.  ..." 

Under  a  strict  interpretation  of  the  law  above  quoted  it  would 
seem  that  in  order  to  escape  being  classified  as  contract  laborers, 
immigrants  coming  to  the  United  States  must  be  entirely  without 
assurance  that  employment  will  be  available  here.  Indeed,  it  is 
certain  that  European  immigrants,  and  particularly  those  from 
southern  and  eastern  Europe,  are,  under  a  literal  construction  of 
the  law,  for  the  most  part  contract  laborers,  for  it  is  unlikely  that 
many  emigrants  embark  for  the  United  States  without  a  pretty 
definite  knowledge  of  where  they  will  go  and  what  they  will  do  if 
admitted.  Natural  instinct  dictates  such  a  condition,  even  though 
the  contract-labor  law,  in  letter  if  not  in  spirit,  forbids  even  the 
semblance  of  an  agreement  in  this  regard. 

It  should  not  be  understood,  however,  that  the  committee  be- 
lieves that  contract  labor  in  its  more  serious  form  does  not  exist. 
Undoubtedly  many  immigrants  come  to  the  United  States  from 
southern  and  eastern  Europe  as  the  result  of  definite,  if  not  open, 
agreements  with  employers  of  labor  here,  as  is  shown  by  the  sep- 
arate report  of  the  Commission  on  the  subject,1  but,  as  previously 

1  Reports  of  the  Immigration  Commission,  Vol.  II,  Contract  Labor  and 
Assisted  and  Induced  Immigration, 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  253 

stated,  actual  and  di'rect  contract-labor  agreements  cannot  be  con- 
sidered as  the  direct  or  immediate  cause  of  any  considerable  pro- 
portion of  the  European  emigration  movement  to  the  United 
States.  As  before  stated,  emigrants  as  a  rule  are  practically  as- 
sured that  employment  awaits  them  in  America  before  they  leave 
their  homes  for  ports  of  embarkation,  and  doubtless  in  a  majority 
of  cases  they  know  just  where  and  what  the  employment  will  be. 
This  is  another  result  of  letters  from  former  emigrants  in  the 
United  States.  In  fact,  it  may  be  said  that  immigrants,  or  at  least 
newly  arrived  immigrants,  are  substantially  the  agencies  which 
keep  the  American  labor  market  supplied  with  unskilled  laborers 
from  Europe.  Some  of  them  operate  consciously  and  on  a  large 
scale,  but,  as  a  rule,  each  immigrant  simply  informs  his  nearest 
friends  that  employment  can  be  had  and  advises  them  to  come. 
It  is  these  personal  appeals  which,  more  than  all  other  agencies, 
promote  and  regulate  the  tide  of  European  emigration  to  America. 

Moreover,  the  immigrant  in  the  United  States  in  a  large  meas- 
ure assists  as  well  as  advises  his  friends  in  the  Old  World  to  emi- 
grate. It  is  difficult  and  in  many  cases  impossible  for  the  southern 
and  eastern  European  to  save  a  sufficient  amount  of  money  to 
purchase  a  steerage  ticket  to  the  United  States.  No  matter  how 
strong  the  desire  to  emigrate  may  be  its  accomplishment  on  the 
part  of  the  ordinary  laborer  dependent  upon  his  own  resources 
can  be  realized  only  after  a  long  struggle.  To  immigrants  in  the 
United  States,  however,  the  price  of  steerage  transportation  to  or 
from  Europe  is  relatively  a  small  matter,  and  by  giving  or  advanc- 
ing the  necessary  money  they  make  possible  the  emigration  of 
many.  It  is  impossible  to  estimate  with  any  degree  of  accuracy 
what  proportion  of  the  large  amount  of  money  annually  sent 
abroad  by  immigrants  is  sent  for  the  purpose  of  assisting  relatives 
or  friends  to  emigrate,  but  it  is  certain  that  the  aggregate  is  large. 
The  immediate  families  of  immigrants  are  the  largest  benefici- 
aries in  this  regard,  but  the  assistance  referred  to  is  extended  to 
many  others. 

Just  what  proportion  of  the  present  immigration  is  assisted  in 
this  way  cannot  be  determined.  Some  indication  of  this,  how- 
ever, is  contained  in  the  probable  fact  that  about  25  per  cent  of 


254  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  immigrants  admitted  to  the  United  States  come  on  steamship 
tickets  paid  for  in  this  country.  In  the  calendar  year  1907, 
27.6  per  cent  or  64,384  of  the  233,489  steerage  passengers 
embarking  at  Naples  for  the  United  States  were  provided  with 
prepaid  tickets.  In  all  probability  this  is  a  fair  average  for  all 
European  ports. 

Next  to  the  advice  and  assistance  of  friends  and  relatives  who 
have  already  emigrated,  the  propaganda  conducted  by  steamship 
ticket  agents  is  undoubtedly  the  most  important  immediate  cause 
of  emigration  from  Europe  to  the  United  States.  This  propa- 
ganda flourishes  in  every  emigrant-furnishing  country  of  Europe, 
notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the  promotion  of  emigration  is  for- 
bidden by  the  laws  of  many  such  countries  as  well  as  by  the 
United  States  immigration  law. 

It  does  not  appear  that  steamship  companies,  as  a  rule,  openly 
or  directly  violate  the  provisions  of  the  United  States  immigration 
law  quoted,  but  through  local  agents  and  subagents  of  such  com- 
panies it  is  violated  persistently  and  continuously.  Selling  steer- 
age tickets  to  America  is  the  sole  or  chief  occupation  of  large 
numbers  of  persons  in  southern  and  eastern  Europe,  and  from 
the  observations  of  the  Commission  it  is  clear  that  these  local 
agents,  as  a  rule,  solicit  business,  and  consequently  encourage 
emigration,  by  every  possible  means. 

No  data  are  available  to  show  even  approximately  the  total 
number  of  such  agents  and  subagents  engaged  in  the  steerage- 
ticket  business.  One  authority  stated  to  the  Commission  that  two 
of  the  leading  steamship  lines  had  five  or  six  thousand  ticket 
agents  in  Galicia  alone,  and  that  there  was  "  a  great  hunt  for  emi- 
grants "  there.  The  total  number  of  such  agents  is  very  large, 
however,  for  the  steerage  business  is  vastly  important  to  all  the 
lines  operating  passenger  ships,  and  all  compete  for  a  share  of  it. 
The  great  majority  of  emigrants  from  southern  and  eastern  Euro- 
pean countries  sail  under  foreign  flags ;  Italian  emigrants,  a  large 
proportion  of  whom  sail  under  the  flag  of  Italy,  being  the  only 
conspicuous  exception.  Many  Greek,  Russian,  and  Austrian  emi- 
grants sail  on  ships  of  those  nations,  but  the  bulk  of  the  emigrant 
business  originating  in  eastern  and  southern  European  countries, 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  255 

excepting  Italy,  is  handled  by  the  British,  German,  Dutch, 
French,  and  Belgian  lines.  There  is  at  present  an  agreement 
among  the  larger  steamship  companies  which,  in  a  measure,  regu- 
lates the  distribution  of  this  traffic  and  prevents  unrestricted  com- 
petition between  the  lines,  but  this  does  not  affect  the  vigorous 
and  widespread  hunt  for  steerage  passengers  which  is  carried  on 
throughout  the  chief  emigrant-furnishing  countries. 

The  Commission's  inquiry  and  information  from  other  sources 
indicates  that  the  attempted  promotion  of  emigration  by  steam- 
ship ticket  agents  is  carried  on  to  a  greater  extent  in  Austria, 
Hungary,  Greece,  and  Russia  than  in  other  countries.  The  Rus- 
sian law,  as  elsewhere  stated,  does  not  recognize  the  right  of  the 
people  to  emigrate  permanently,  and  while  the  large  and  con- 
tinued movement  of  population  from  the  Empire  to  overseas 
countries  is  proof  that  the  law  is  to  a  large  degree  inoperative,  it 
nevertheless  seems  to  restrict  the  activities  of  steamship  agents. 
Moreover,  there  were,  at  the  time  of  the  Commission's  inquiry, 
two  Russian  steamship  lines  carrying  emigrants  directly  from 
Libau  to  the  United  States,  and  the  Government's  interest  in  the 
success  of  these  lines  resulted  in  a  rather  strict  surveillance  of 
the  agents  of  foreign  companies  doing  business  in  the  Empire. 
Because  of  this  much  of  the  work  of  these  agents  is  carried  on 
surreptitiously.  In  fact,  they  were  commonly  described  to  the 
Commission  as  "  secret  agents."  Emigration  from  Russia  is,  or 
at  least  is  made  to  appear  to  be,  a  difficult  matter,  and  the  work 
of  the  secret  agents  consists  not  only  of  selling  steamship  trans- 
portation, but  also  in  procuring  passports,  and  in  smuggling 
across  the  frontier  emigrants  who  for  military  or  other  reasons 
cannot  procure  passports,  or  who  because  of  their  excessive  cost 
elect  to  leave  Russia  without  them. 

The  Hungarian  law  strictly  forbids  the  promotion  of  emigra- 
tion, and  the  Government  has  prosecuted  violations  so  vigorously 
that  at  the  time  of  the  Commission's  visit  the  emigration  authori- 
ties expressed  the  belief  that  the  practice  had  been  effectually 
checked.  It  was  stated  to  the  Commission  that  foreign  steamship 
lines  had  constantly  acted  in  contravention  of  the  Hungarian  reg- 
ulations by  employing  secret  agents  to  solicit  business,  or  through 


256  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

agents  writing  personal  letters  to  prospective  emigrants  advising 
them  how  to  leave  Hungary  without  the  consent  of  the  Govern- 
ment. Letters  of  this  nature  were  presented  to  the  Commission. 
Some  of  them  are  accompanied  by  crudely  drawn  maps  indicating 
the  location  of  all  the  Hungarian  control  stations  on  the  Austrian 
border,  and  the  routes  of  travel  by  which  such  stations  can  be 
avoided.  The  Commission  was  shown  the  records  in  hundreds  of 
cases  where  the  secret  agents  of  foreign  steamship  companies  had 
been  convicted  and  fined  or  imprisoned  for  violating  the  Hun- 
garian law  by  soliciting  emigration.  It  was  reported  to  the  Com- 
mission that  in  one  year  at  Kassa,  a  Hungarian  city  on  the 
Austrian  border,  eight  secret  agents  of  the  German  lines  were 
punished  for  violations  of  the  emigration  law. 

In  Austria  at  the  time  of  the  Commission's  visit,  there  was 
comparatively  little  agitation  relative  to  emigration.  Attempts  had 
been  made  to  enact  an  emigration  law  similar  to  that  of  Hungary, 
but  these  were  not  successful.  The  solicitation  of  emigration, 
however,  is  forbidden  by  law,  but  it  appeared  that  steamship 
ticket  agents  were  not  subjected  to  strict  regulation  as  in  Hun- 
gary. Government  officials  and  others  interested  in  the  emigra- 
tion situation  expressed  the  belief  that  the  solicitations  of  agents 
had  little  effect  on  the  emigration  movement,  which  was  influ- 
enced almost  entirely  by  economic  conditions.  It  was  not  denied, 
however,  that  steamship  agents  do  solicit  emigration. 

The  Italian  law  strictly  forbids  the  solicitation  of  emigration  by 
steamship  agents  and  complaints  relative  to  violations  of  the  law 
were  not  nearly  so  numerous  as  in  some  countries  visited.  Never- 
theless there  are  many  persons  engaged  in  the  business  of  selling 
steerage  tickets  in  that  country  and  the  Commission  was  informed 
that  considerable  soliciting  is  done.  This  is  confirmed  by  Hon. 
T.  V.  Powderly,  of  the  Bureau  of  Immigration,  who  investi- 
gated emigration  conditions  in  Italy  in  1906.  Mr.  Powderly  states 
that  steamship  agents  solicit  business  much  as  insurance  agents 
do,  and  that  in  many  instances  they  do  not  concern  themselves 
with  the  character  or  mental  or  physical  condition  of  their  cus- 
tomers, their  sole  object  being  to  increase  their  commissions.  He 
states  that  one  method  adopted  is  to  translate  editorials  and 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  257 

articles  from  American  newspapers  relative  to  the  prosperity  of  the 
United  States,  which  articles  are  distributed  among  prospective 
emigrants.  He  also  reports  a  curious  method  of  presenting  at 
church  doors  cards  containing  verses  and  hymns  in  praise  of  the 
United  States. 

The  Commission  found  that  steamship  agents  were  very  active 
in  Greece,  and  that  the  highly-colored  posters  and  other  adver- 
tising matter  of  the  steamship  companies  were  to  be  found 
everywhere.  According  to  its  population  Greece  furnishes  more 
emigrants  to  the  United  States  than  any  other  country,  and  the 
spirit  of  emigration  is  so  intense  among  the  people  that  solicita- 
tion by  steamship  companies  probably  plays  relatively  a  small  part, 
even  as  a  contributory  cause  of  the  movement. 

The  United  States  immigration  law  numbers  among  the  ex- 
cluded classes  l  "  any  person  whose  ticket  or  passage  is  paid  for 
with  the  money  of  another,  or  who  is  assisted  by  others  to  come, 
unless  it  is  affirmatively  and  satisfactorily  shown  that  such  person 
does  not  belong  to  one  of  the  foregoing  excluded  classes,  and 
that  said  ticket  or  passage  was  not  paid  for  by  any  corporation, 
association,  society,  municipality,  or  foreign  government,  either 
directly  or  indirectly." 

Emigration  from  Europe  to  the  United  States  through  public 
assistance  is  so  small  as  to  be  of  little  or  no  importance.  It  is 
conceivable  as  well  as  probable  that  local  authorities  sometimes 
assist  in  the  emigration  of  public  charges  and  criminals,  but  such 
instances  are  believed  to  be  rare.  It  is  admitted  that  local  officials 
in  Italy  sometimes  issue  to  criminals  passports  to  the  United 
States  in  violation  of  the  decree  forbidding  it,  but  even  this  is  not 
a  very  common  practice.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  European  nations 
look  with  regret  on  the  emigration  of  their  young  and  able-bodied 
men  and  women,  and  the  comity  of  nations  would  prevent  the 
deportation  of  criminals  and  paupers  to  a  country  whose  laws 
denied  admission  to  such  classes,  however  desirable  their  emigra- 
tion might  be.  Besides,  the  assisted  emigration  to  the  United 
States  of  the  aged  or  physically  or  mentally  defective  would  be 
sure  to  result  in  failure  because  of  the  stringent  provisions  of  the 

1  Immigration  Act  of  February  20,  1907,  section  2. 


258  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

United  States  immigration  law.  In  the  earlier  days  of  unrestricted 
immigration  it  is  well  known  that  large  numbers  of  paupers  and 
other  undesirables  were  assisted  to  emigrate,  or  were  practically 
deported,  from  the  British  Isles  and  other  countries  to  the  United 
States.  Even  at  the  present  time,  as  shown  in  the  Commission's 
report  on  the  immigration  situation  in  Canada,  there  is  a  large 
assisted  emigration  from  England  to  Canada  and  other  British 
colonies,  but  it  does  not  appear  that  there  is  any  movement  of 
this  nature  to  the  United  States. 

On  the  other  hand,  various  nations  of  the  Western  Hemisphere 
make  systematic  efforts  in  Europe  to  induce  immigration.  The 
Canadian  government  maintains  agencies  in  all  the  countries  of 
northern  and  western  Europe,  where  the  solicitation  of  emigration 
is  permitted,  and  pays  a  bonus  to  thousands  of  booking  agents 
for  directing  emigrants  to  the  Dominion.1  Canada,  however, 
expends  no  money  in  the  transportation  of  emigrants.  Several 
South  American  countries,  including  Brazil  and  Argentine  Re- 
public, also  systematically  solicit  immigration  in  Europe. 

Several  American  States  have  attempted  to  attract  immi- 
grants by  the  distribution  in  Europe  of  literature  advertising 
the  attractions  of  such  States.  A  few  States  have  sent  com- 
missioners to  various  countries  for  the  purpose  of  inducing  im- 
migration, but,  although  some  measure  of  success  has  attended 
such  efforts,  the  propaganda  has  had  little  effect  on  the  movement 
as  a  whole. 

In  many  cities  of  Europe  are  societies  whose  purpose  is  to 
assist  the  Jews  of  Russia  and  Roumania  to  emigrate  and  to  pro- 
tect them  on  their  journey  to  ports  of  embarkation.  It  would  be 
strange  if  some  of  these  societies  did  not  assist  emigrating  mem- 
bers of  the  race  in  violation  of  the  letter  of  the  United  States  law, 
although  no  such  instances  came  directly  to  the  attention  of  the 
Commission.  From  all  that  could  be  learned  from  and  about  the 
more  important  Jewish  organization  of  this  nature,  however,  it 
appears  that  they  do  not  assist  emigrants  to  the  extent  of  affording 
them  transportation  to  the  United  States. 

1  Reports  of  the  Immigration  Commission,  Vol.  XT.,  "  The  Immigration  Situa- 
tion in  Other  Countries"  (Gist  Cong.,  3d  Session,  Sen.  Doc.  No.  761.). 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  259 

The  Roumanian  agent  of  the  Jewish  Colonization  Association, 
otherwise  the  Baron  de  Hirsch  Fund,  stated  to  the  Commission 
that  the  society  does  not  financially  assist  any  Jew  to  go  to  the 
United  States.  He  said  that  the  organization  sends  to  Canada 
and  Argentina  persons  who  have  actually  been  expelled  from 
farming  villages  and  thereafter  refused  admission  to  some  large 
city,  in  which  cases  the  emigrant  pays  all  the  fare  he  is  able  to, 
and  the  organization  pays  the  rest. 

The  foregoing  attitude  of  the  organization  toward  assisting  emi- 
gration from  Roumania  to  the  United  States  is  substantiated  by 
the  experience  of  a  member  of  the  Commission  in  conversation 
with  workers  in  the  sweatshops  of  the  Jewish  quarter  in  Bucharest, 
which  is  stated  as  follows  : 

I  went  into  each  shop,  without  previous  notice,  and  in  nearly  every  shop 
some  man  or  woman  expressed  a  desire  to  go  to  America.  Whenever  such  a 
wish  was  expressed,  I  asked,  "  Why  not  go  to  the  Jewish  Colonization  So- 
ciety ? "  And  in  every  instance  the  people  told  me  that  the  society  only  helps 
those  who  can  pay  their  own  way.  One  young  man  asked  me  if  a  hundred 
francs  would  take  him  to  America,  and  I  told  him  no,  but  suggested  that  he  take 
his  hundred  francs  to  the  society  and  ask  them  for  the  balance,  but  he  said  he 
knew  this  would  be  useless.  Nearly  every  worker  in  these  shops  would  go  to 
America  if  possessed  of  the  necessary  money.  At  the  various  houses  they 
brought  me  pictures  of  prosperous  looking  relatives  in  the  United  States,  but 
in  many  instances  they  said  that  their  relatives  either  had  practically  forgotten 
them,  or  that  they  seldom  heard  from  them. 

Officials  of  the  Jewish  Colonization  Association  in  Paris  stated 
the  objects  of  that  organization  to  the  Commission.  It  was  pointed 
out  that  every  country  from  which  many  citizens  emigrate  was 
compelled  to  frame  laws  regulating  this  emigration,  and  protecting 
the  emigrant  from  various  frauds  and  abuses  he  is  liable  to  meet 
with  on  his  way.  The  Jews  alone  were  up  to  recent  date  unpro- 
tected, and  were  easy  prey  of  unscrupulous  agents,  runners,  money 
changers,  etc.,  and  the  association  endeavored  to  protect  them  in 
this  regard.  Emigrants  leaving  Russia  and  Roumania  were  as- 
sisted in  securing  passports.  In  those  countries,  it  was  stated,  the 
Jewish  Colonization  Association  has  an  arrangement  with  the  gov- 
ernments whereby  passports  are  given  gratis  to  Jewish  emigrants 
who  are  recommended  by  the  association,  provided  they  declare 


260  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

that  they  will  never  return  to  their  native  land,  while  in  cases 
where  the  emigrants  themselves  apply  for  passports,  the  cost  is 
about  30  rubles  in  Russia,  and  25  lei  in  Roumania.  Moreover, 
when  an  emigrant  applies  for  a  passport,  he  often  has  to  wait 
weeks,  even  months  before  the  document  is  issued,  while  the  rep- 
resentatives of  the  association  generally  get  the  passport  within  a 
few  days  after  applying.  It  was  further  stated  that  many  emi- 
grants do  not  know  where  it  is  best  for  them  to  go,  and  that  the 
local  committees  of  the  association  give  such  persons  advice  in 
this  regard.  Of  late,  the  officials  said,  they  are  advising  all  those 
who  express  a  desire  to  emigrate  to  the  United  States  to  go  to 
the  Southern  and  Western  States.  The  Russian  division  of  the 
association  has  issued  tracts  in  the  Russian  and  Yiddish  lan- 
guages describing  in  detail  the  resources  of  such  States  and  the 
opportunities  they  offer  to  immigrants.  Previously  it  was  often 
the  case  that  many  emigrants  who  suffered  from  contagious  eye 
and  scalp  diseases  sold  out  all  their  belongings  and  went  to  ports 
of  embarkation  intending  to  embark  for  the  United  States.  These 
were  rejected  by  the  steamship  companies  and  many  families  were 
thus  ruined,  and  often  remained  in  the  port  cities,  becoming 
public  charges  on  the  Jewish  communities.  To  obviate  this  the 
Jewish  Colonization  Association  has  physicians  who  carefully  ex- 
amine all  those  intending  to  go  to  the  United  States,  and  \vho 
apply  to  them,  before  leaving  their  native  cities. 

The  Commission  was  assured  that  this  is  all  the  assistance  ren- 
dered to  Jewish  emigrants  to  the  United  States  who  come  in 
contact  with  the  association,  and  that  under  no  circumstances  are 
emigrants  going  to  the  United  States  given  any  material  assist- 
ance. In  exceptional  cases,  it  was  stated,  as  after  an  anti-Jewish 
riot  in  Russia  or  Roumania,  when  material  assistance  is  absolutely 
necessary,  the  emigrants  are  assisted  to  go  to  Argentina,  Brazil, 
or,  rarely,  to  Canada,  but  that  the  United  States  as  a  destination 
in  such  cases  is  out  of  the  question. 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  261 

EMIGRATION  OF  CRIMINALS 

That  former  convicts  and  professional  criminals  from  all  coun- 
tries come  to  the  United  States  practically  at  will  cannot  and 
need  not  be  denied,  although  it  seems  probable  that  in  the  popu- 
lar belief  the  number  is  greatly  exaggerated.  This  class  emigrates 
and  is  admitted  to  this  country,  and,  in  the  opinion  of  the  Com- 
mission, the  blame  cannot  equitably  be  placed  elsewhere  than  on 
the  United  States.  The  Commission  is  convinced  that  no  Euro- 
pean government  encourages  the  emigration  of  its  criminals  to 
this  country.  Some  countries  take  no  measures  to  prevent  such 
emigration,  especially  after  criminals  have  paid  the  legal  penalties 
demanded,  but  others,  and  particularly  Italy,  seek  to  restrain  the 
departure  of  former  convicts  in  common  with  other  classes  de- 
barred by  the  United  States  immigration  law.  The  accomplish- 
ment of  this  purpose  on  the  part  of  Italy  is  attempted  by  specific 
regulations  forbidding  the  issuance  of  passports  to  intended  immi- 
grants who  have  been  convicted  of  a  felony  or  other  crime  or  mis- 
demeanor involving  moral  turpitude  within  the  meaning  of  the 
United  States  law.  Under  the  Italian  system  local  officials  fur- 
nish the  record  upon  which  is  determined  the  intending  emi- 
grant's right  to  receive  a  passport,  and  it  is  not  denied  that  some 
officials  at  times  violate  the  injunctions  of  the  Government  in  this 
regard,  but,  as  a  whole,  the  Commission  believes  the  effort  is  hon- 
estly made  and  in  the  main  successfully  accomplished.  The  weak- 
ness and  inefficiency  of  the  system,  however,  lies  in  the  fact  that 
passports  are  not  demanded  by  the  United  States  as  a  requisite  of 
admission,  and  although  subjects  of  Italy  may  not  leave  Italian 
ports  without  them,  there  is  little  or  nothing  to  prevent  those  un- 
provided from  leaving  the  country  overland  without  passports  or 
with  passports  to  other  countries  and  then  embarking  for  the 
United  States  from  foreign  ports.  Thus  it  is  readily  seen  that 
the  precaution  of  Italy,  however  effective,  is  practically  worthless 
without  cooperation  on  the  part  of  the  United  States. 


262 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


23.   WAVE  OF  IMMIGRATION  INTO  THE  UNITED  STATES, 

o  — •  •?*  M  ^^fi  tar— ooc>o*^ciiM  « 
<&rt£i|3SpgSgl£ic2coc2c2  < 


1,300,000 

1,200,000 

1,100,000 

1,000,000 

900,000 

800,000 

700,000 

600,000 

500,000 


i-jl-J£-ji-jl-j|ljs2  pjfl  fl 
s  JL  JL  .j.  JL  _• I,  JL  JL  -L  - 


ARRIVALS  1820  TO  1915,  32,354,124 

Figures  denoting  immigration  for  the  years  1832,  1843,  1850,  1857,  represent 
respectively  i  5-month,  9-month,  1 5-month  and  6-month  periods,  while  1 2-month 
periods  for  those  years  have  been  approximated  in  the  graphic  representation. 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS 
FROM  ALL  COUNTRIES,  1820  —  1915 


263 


1,300,000 
1,200,000 
1,100,000 
1,000,000 
900,000 


500,000 


400,000 


300,000 


U 


IXJ 


fi 


100,000 


JL 


264  READINGS  IN   SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

24.    THE   INDUSTRIAL  SIGNIFICANCE   OF  RECENT 
IMMIGRATION  i 

RECENT  EXPANSION  OF  AMERICAN  INDUSTRY 

Recent  immigration  is  responsible  for  many  social  and  political 
problems.  Its  chief  significance,  however,  is  industrial,  and  of  the 
industrial  phases  of  the  subject  none  is  of  greater  importance 
than  the  effect  of  recent  immigration  from  southern  and  eastern 
Europe  upon  native  Americans  as  well  as  upon  wage-earners 
belonging  to  the  races  of  past  immigration  from  northern  and 
western  Europe  and  Great  Britain.  The  changes  are  of  almost 
equal  importance  to  industrial  organization,  and  industrial  methods 
and  processes  resulting  from  the  entrance  of  such  large  numbers 
of  southern  and  eastern  European  and  Asiatic  immigrants  into 
the  industrial  life  of  the  country  during  the  past  thirty  years. 
The  effect  of  recent  immigration  upon  the  working  and  living 
conditions  of  wage-earners  in  industrial  localities  is  also  of  great 
interest  and  importance. 

The  period  covered  by  the  past  thirty  years  has  been  marked 
in  the  United  States  by  an  extraordinary  industrial  development, 
including  manufacturing,  mining,  and  all  branches  of  industrial 
enterprise.  This  expansion  has  obviously  been  most  pronounced 
in  the  manufacturing  States  east  of  the  Mississippi  and  north  of 
the  Ohio  and  Potomac  rivers.  There  has  been,  however,  a  consid- 
erable development  in  the  territory  between  the  Mississippi  and 
the  Rocky  Mountains  and  in  the  South,  although  not  so  extensive 
as  in  the  Middle  West  and  the  Middle  and  New  England  States. 
The  remarkable  growth  in  manufactures  in  the  territory  between 
the  Rocky  Mountains  and  the  Atlantic  seaboard  during  the 
twenty-five  years  1880-1905,  may  be  readily  seen  from  the  table 
below,  which  shows  the  amount  of  capital  invested  and  the  value 
of  output  of  all  manufacturing  establishments  during  this  period 
according  to  census  years : 


1  Adapted    from    the    United    States    Immigration    Commission.    Abstract    of 
Report  on  Immigrants  in  Manufacturing  and  Mining,  1911,  pp.  217-247,  256-267. 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS 


265 


TOTAL  CAPITAL  AND  VALUE  OF  PRODUCTS  OF  MANUFAC- 
TURES IN  THE  STATES  EAST  OF  THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS, 
1880-1905,  BY  CENSUS  PERIODS1 


YEAR 

TOTAL  CAPITAL 

VALUE  OF  PRODUCTS 

IQCK 

$I2,O'U,';88  CKO 

&i  7.087.674  01  c 

I  goo     ... 

9,384,  ''63,009 

f.746.  C7O  l8  C 

1890     .                .... 

6  ''68,979  270 

Q  OI  I    CJ.1  12.A 

iSSo     

2,708,  S4C,  44.1; 

5,212,505,186 

INCREASE  IN  THE  NUMBER  OF  WAGE-EARNERS 

The  most  significant  fact  regarding  recent  immigration  dis- 
closed by  the  industrial  study  is  the  unprecedented  increase  in 
the  operating  forces  of  the  mines  and  manufacturing  establish- 
ments accompanying  the  rapid  extension  of  industrial  activities. 
The  number  of  employees  of  mines  and  manufacturing  establish- 
ments in  the  territory  east  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  was  more 
than  doubled  during  the  thirty  years  1880-1909.  The  extent  of 
this  increase  during  the  first  twenty-five  years  of  that  period  is 
shown  in  the  table  below,  which  sets  forth,  according  to  the 
federal  census  returns,  the  average  number  of  wage-earners 
engaged  in  mining  and  manufacturing  in  the  years  specified  : 


YKAR 

NUMBER 

IQOO     . 

7,O77,  711 

1890     .           ....           .           .                 

5,618,306 

1880     

3>743'374 

The  great  increase  in  laboring  forces  becomes  more  apparent 
when  the  agricultural  States  of  the  area  under  discussion  are 
eliminated  and  those  engaged  principally  in  manufacturing  and 
mining  are  considered.  In  order  that  the  real  significance  of  the 
situation  may  be  seen,  the  growth  in  the  number  of  wage-earners 

1  These  computations  are  made  solely  for  manufactures  in  the  States  chosen, 
as  it  is  impossible  to  form  parallel  comparisons  for  the  mines  and  quarries,  owing 
to  the  various  statistical  forms  used  in  their  tabulation  in  the  several  censuses. 


266 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


[in  manufacturing  and  mining]  in  the  principal  manufacturing 
and  mining  States  east  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  is  shown  for  the 
period  1880-1910  in  the  table  which  immediately  follows: 


STATE 

1910  > 

1900 

1890 

1880 

Alabama    

1  76,760 

78,004 

48,870 

21,622 

Connecticut  

260,708 

17  ^,777 

I  50,120 

I  I4.7O7 

Delaware  ....         .         ... 

70,271; 

•>•>,•>()•> 

18,678 

T      1        8     C;l 

Illinois  ...              .     . 

822,207 

470.804 

757.621 

2O7  060 

Indiana      ....         

774,702 

206,285 

i  C2,i;i  i 

107,7^6 

Kansas  

1  28,01;  i 

71,760 

6--4C 

76.104 

Maryland  .    . 

I7O.H-7 

127,71;'' 

I  oq,  1  60 

8  1  679 

Massachusetts   

777,070 

i;  60,787 

484,706 

767,142 

Michigan  

70S,Ql6 

225.S40 

188,450 

I  -0,400 

Minnesota     

-lo.oo1; 

1  18,7^4 

9  -.740 

77.488 

New  Jersey   
New  York     

498,303 

1,607,704 

301,642 

1,031,020 

232,126 

8^4,020 

'57-195 

621,076 

Ohio  

7  ^7,480 

462,81- 

768.770 

-40,788 

Oklahoma 

8^,002 

8,8-7 

-.21  7 

* 

Pennsylvania     

1,  1:70,744 

082,200 

770,070 

1:28,877 

Rhode  Island    

142,7  =;o 

100,477 

8-,O77 

65,056 

West  Virginia   

I  ^7,682 

67,764 

4  1  ,864 

26,006 

Wisconsin      

2Sc;,<;i7 

17  ^,267 

i  ^6,4  c;6 

82,111 

Total  

8,780,720 

5,191,684 

4,1  ci,766 

2,816,877 

*  Unobtainable 

From  these  figures  it  will  be  noted  that  there  has  been  a 
steady  increase  in  the  number  of  employees  in  the  manufactures, 
mines,  and  quarries  of  each  of  the  States  specified.  The  total 
number  of  employees  rises  from  2,816,877  in  1880  to  5,191,684 
in  1900,  an  increase  of  84.3  per  cent.  Between  1880  and  1890 
there  was  an  increase  of  47.4  per  cent  in  the  total  number  and 
the  slightly  decreased  growth  in  the  next  decade  can  probably  be 
attributed  to  the  general  introduction  of  labor-saving  machinery 
during  that  period.  In  the  case  of  the  individual  States,  'it  will 
be  noted  that  but  three,  Alabama,  Indiana,  and  West  Virginia, 
show  their  greater  increase  in  numbers  in  the  ten  years  from 
1890  to  1900.  Several  western  States  show  a  great  increase  from 


1  Compiled  from  I3th  Census,  Vol.  IV,  Occupation  Statistics,  p.  44.  —  ED. 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  267 

1880  to  1890;  for  example,  Illinois  shows  an  increase  of  73 
per  cent,  Michigan  of  about  56  per  cent,  Minnesota  of  147  per 
cent,  and  Wisconsin  of  66  per  cent.  In  the  East  and  North  the 
proportion  has  not  been  so  great.  The  increase  in  number  of 
wage-earners  from  1880  to  1900  ranges  from  51  per  cent  in  the 
case  of  Maryland  to  260.8  per  cent  in  the  case  of  Alabama.1 

EMPLOYMENT  OF  IMMIGRANT  LABOR 

The  labor  force  that  in  large  part  was  used  for  this  industrial 
expansion  was  drawn  from  the  recent  immigration  from  southern 
and  eastern  Europe  and  Asia.  The  result  has  been  that  the 
racial  composition  of  the  industrial  population  of  the  country  has 
within  recent  years  undergone  a  complete  change,  and  the  cities 
and  industrial  localities  of  the  United  States  have  received  large 
additions  to  their  population  in  the  form  of  industrial  workers  of 
alien  speech,  manners,  and  customs.  The  greater  proportion  of 
the  wage-earners  at  the  present  time  engaged  in  manufacturing 
and  mining  are  of  foreign  birth,  and  of  the  total  number  of 
foreign-born  employees  the  larger  part  consists  of  representatives 
of  races  from  the  south  and  east  of  Europe  and  from  Asia. 
This  condition  of  affairs  is  not  limited  to  the  manufacturing 
areas  of  the  Middle  States  and  New  England.  It  prevails  where- 
ever  manufacturing  interests  or  mining  operations  are  of  any 
importance.  The  southern  and  eastern  European  is  extensively 
employed  in  the  iron  ore  and  copper  mines  of  Michigan  and 
Minnesota,  in  the  coal  mines  of  the  Middle  West,  Southwest, 
and  South,  and  in  the  steel  plants  and  glass  factories  of  the 
Middle  West  and  South,  as  well  as  in  the  mines,  mills,  and  fac- 
tories of  Pennsylvania,  New  York,  and  New  Jersey,  and  the 
cotton  and  woolen  goods  manufacturing  establishments  of  New 
England.  The  presence  of  this  class  of  wage-earners  is  not  only 
characteristic  of  the  basic  industries  of  the  country,  but  is  also  found 
in  all  minor  divisions  of  manufacturing  and  mining.  Moreover, 

1  Striking  as  are  these  increases  up  to  1900  —  the  latest  date  for  which  statis- 
tics were  available  to  the  Commission  —  a  slight  study  of  the  figures  for  1910, 
which  we  have  inserted,  reveals  the  remarkable  later  growth.  —  ED. 


268  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

railroad  and  canal  construction,  together  with  other  temporary 
and  seasonal  work,  in  all  sections  of  the  country  is  now  being 
done  by  members  of  races  of  recent  immigration.  There  is  not 
an  industrial  community  of  any  importance  east  of  the  Missis- 
sippi and  north  of  the  Ohio  and  Potomac  rivers  which  does  not 
include  within  its  borders  a  considerable  number  of  industrial 
workers  of  races  of  recent  immigration.  Of  the  total  number  of 
wage-earners  employed  in  the  principal  industries  within  this 
area  from  whom  information  was  secured,  about  60  per  cent  are 
of  foreign  birth,  39  per  cent  being  from  southern  and  eastern 
Europe  and  Asia.  Of  the  total  number  of  foreign-born  about  6.7 
per  cent  are  of  races  of  southern  and  eastern  Europe  and  Asia. 

REASONS  FOR  THE  EMPLOYMENT  OF  RECENT  IMMIGRANTS 

It  is  not  possible  to  determine  definitely  whether  the  recent 
rapid  and  unprecedented  expansion  of  industry  has  been  the  cause 
of  the  recent  influx  of  immigrants  from  southern  and  eastern 
Europe,  or  whether  the  existence  of  an  available  supply  of  cheap 
labor  easily  induced  to  immigrate  was  the  cause  of  the  industrial 
expansion.  It  is  a  possibility  that  if  the  demand  for  labor  had 
not  found  so  large  a  supply  of  cheap  labor  available,  increased 
wages  and  better  working  conditions  required  to  attract  labor 
might  have  induced  a  continuation  of  immigration  from  northern 
and  western  Europe  and  the  United  Kingdom.  On  the  other 
hand,  less  immigration  of  a  character  tending  to  keep  down  wages 
and  working  conditions  might  have  been  attended  by  a  larger 
natural  increase  among  the  native-born  portion  of  the  population. 
There  is  ground  for  argument  or  speculation  on  each  side  of 
these  various  points.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  has  not  appeared  in 
the  case  of  the  industries  covered  by  the  present  investigation 
that  it  was  usual  for  employers  to  engage  recent  immigrants  at 
wages  actually  lower  than  those  prevailing  at  the  time  of  their 
employment  in  the  industry  where  they  were  employed.  It  is 
undoubtedly  true  that  the  expansion  in  all  branches  of  industry 
between  thirty  and  forty  years  ago  was  primarily  responsible  for 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  269 

the  original  entrance  of  the  southern  and  eastern  Europeans  into 
the  operating  forces  of  the  mines  and  manufacturing  establish- 
ments. They  were  found,  from  the  standpoint  of  the  employer, 
to  be  tractable  and  uncomplaining.  Although  they  were  possessed 
of  a  low  order  of  industrial  efficiency,  it  was  possible  to  use 
them  in  a  more  or  less  satisfactory  way.  Upon  the  ascertainment 
of  this  fact  by  the  employers  and  with  the  realization  of  the 
existence  of  this  large  source  of  labor  supply,  a  reversal  of  con- 
ditions occurred.  The  industrial  expansion  which  had  originally 
caused  the  immigration  of  southern  and  eastern  Europeans  was 
in  turn  stimulated  by  their  presence,  and  new  industrial  under- 
takings were  doubtless  projected  on  the  assumption  of  the  con- 
tinuing availability  of  this  class  of  labor.  At  the  same  time, 
the  influx  of  southern  and  eastern  Europeans  brought  about 
conditions  of  employment  under  which  there  was  no  sufficient 
inducement  to  the  races  of  Great  Britain  and  northern  Europe 
to  continue  to  seek  work  in  those  industries.  It  may  be  said, 
therefore,  that  industrial  expansion  was  the  original  reason  for 
the  employment  of  races  of  recent  immigration,  but  that  after  the 
availability  of  this  labor  became  known  further  industrial  expansion 
was  stimulated  by  the  fact  of  this  availability,  the  original  cause 
thus  becoming  largely  an  effect  of  the  conditions  it  had  created. 

CONDITIONS  WHICH  MADE  POSSIBLE  THE    EXTENSIVE 
EMPLOYMENT  OF  RECENT  IMMIGRANTS 

An  interesting  point  in  this  connection  is  the  fact  that  it  was 
possible  to  receive  such  a  large  body  of  employees  of  foreign 
birth  into  the  American  industrial  system.  The  older  immigrant 
labor  supply  was  composed  principally  of  persons  who  had  had 
training  and  experience  abroad  in  the  industries  which  they 
entered  after  their  arrival  in  the  United  States.  English,  German, 
Scotch,  and  Irish  immigrants  in  textile  factories,  iron  and  steel 
establishments,  or  in  the  coal  mines,  usually  had  been  skilled 
workmen  in  these  industries  in  their  native  lands  and  came  to 
the  United  States  in  the  expectation  of  higher  wages  and  better 


2/0  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

working  conditions.  In  the  case  of  the  more  recent  immigrants 
from  southern  and  eastern  Europe  this  condition  of  affairs  has 
been  reversed.  Before  coming  to  the  United  States  the  greater 
proportion  were  engaged  in  farming  or  unskilled  labor  and  had 
no  experience  or  training  in  manufacturing  or  mining.  As  a 
consequence  their  employment  in  the  mines  and  manufacturing 
plants  of  this  country  has  been  made  possible  only  by  the  inven- 
tion of  mechanical  devices  and  processes  which  have  eliminated 
the  skill  and  experience  formerly  required  in  a  large  number  of 
occupations.  Probably  one  of  the  best  illustrations  of  this  fact  is 
to  be  found  in  the  operation  of  coal,  copper,  and  other  metallifer- 
ous mines.  I  In  bituminous-coal  mining,  for  example,  the  pick  or 
hand  miner  was  formerly  an  employee  of  skill  and  experience.  He 
undercut  the  coal,  drilled  his  own  holes,  fired  his  own  shots,  and, 
together  with  his  helper,  loaded  the  coal  which  came  down  upon 
the  cars,  and  was  paid  so  much  per  ton  for  the  entire  operation. 
By  the  invention  of  the  mining  machine,  however,  the  occupa- 
tion of  the  pick  miner  has  been  largely  done  away  with,  thereby 
increasing  the  proportion  of  unskilled  workmen  who  load  the 
coal  on  cars  after  it  has  been  undercut  and  the  holes  drilled  by 
machinery,  and  the  coal  knocked  down  by  a  blast  set  off  by  a 
shot  firer  specialized  for  that  division  of  the  labor.  Such  work  can 
readily  be  done,  after' a  few  days'  apprenticeship,  by  recent  immi- 
grants who,  before  immigrating  to  the  United  States,  had  never 
seen  a  coal  mine.  The  same  situation  is  found  in  the  cotton 
factories,  where  unskilled  and  inexperienced  immigrants  can, 
after  a  brief  training,  operate  the  automatic  looms  and  ring 
spinning  frames  which  do  the  work  formerly  requiring  skilled 
weavers  and  mule  spinners.jln  the  glass  factories,  also,  which  are 
engaged  in  the  manufacture  of  bottles  and  window  and  plate 
glass,  untrained  immigrants,  through  the  assistance  of  improved 
machinery,  turn  out  the  same  products  which  in  past  years 
required  the  services  of  the  highly  trained  glass  blowers.  In  the 
iron  and  steel  plants  and  other  branches  of  manufacturing  similar 
inventions  have  made  it  possible  to  operate  the  plants  with  a 
much  smaller  proportion  of  skilled  and  specialized  employees 
than  was  formerly  the  case.  It  is  this  condition  of  industrial 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  271 

affairs,  as  already  stated,  which  has  made  it  possible  to  give 
employment  to  the  untrained,  inexperienced,  non-English-speaking 
immigrant  of  recent  arrival  in  the  United  States. 


PRESENT-DAY  INDUSTRIAL  COMMUNITIES 

The  general  effects  of  the  extensive  employment  of  immigrant 
labor  in  American  industries  are  found  in  the  municipal  and  civic 
problems  which  are  the  outgrowth  of  the  presence  of  the  alien 
population.  The  foreign  or  immigrant  communities  which  have 
come  into  existence  because  of  the  recent  industrial  expansion 
and  the  resultant  influx  of  immigrants  from  southern  and  eastern 
Europe  are  of  two  general  types.  The  first  type  is  a  community 
which  has,  by  a  gradual  process  of  social  accretion,  affixed  itself 
to  the  original  population  of  an  industrial  town  or  city  which  had 
already  been  established  before  the  arrival  of  races  of  recent 
immigration.  Foreign  communities  of  this  type  are  as  numerous 
as  the  older  industrial  towns  and  centers  of  the  country,  any  one 
of  which  in  New  England,  in  the  Middle  States,  or  in  the 
Middle  West  or  Southwest  will  be  found  to  have  its  immigrant 
section  or  colony.  The  second  type  of  immigrant  community  has 
come  into  existence  within  recent  years  because  of  the  development 
of  some  natural  resource,  such  as  coal,  iron  ore,  or  copper,  or  by 
reason  of  the  extension  of  the  principal  manufacturing  industries 
of  the  country.  They  are  usually  communities  clustering  around 
mines  or  industrial  plants,  and  their  distinguishing  feature  is  that 
a  majority  of  their  inhabitants,  often  practically  all,  are  of  foreign 
birth,  the  population  being  composed  of  Slavs,  Italians,  Magyars, 
and  other  peoples  of  recent  immigration.  Illustrations  of  this 
type  of  immigrant  communities  are  common  in  the  bituminous 
and  anthracite  coal-mining  regions  of  Pennsylvania  and  in  the 
coal-producing  areas  of  Virginia,  West  Virginia,  Alabama,  Ohio, 
Indiana,  Illinois,  Kansas,  and  Oklahoma.  In  the  Mesabi  and 
Vermillion  iron-ore  ranges  of  Minnesota,  as  well  as  in  the  iron- 
ore  and  copper-mining  districts  of  Michigan,  many  communities  of 
this  character  are  found.  Although  not  so  numerous,  they  are  not 
infrequently  established  in  connection  with  the  leading  industries, 


272  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

such  as  the  manufacture  of  iron  and  steel,  glass,  cotton  and 
woolen  goods,  etc.  As  representative  types  of  this  class  in  dif- 
ferent sections  of  the  country  there  may  be  cited  West  Seneca 
or  Lackawanna  City,  near  Buffalo,  New  York,  a  steel  town  10 
years  old,  with  a  total  population  of  20,000,  more  than  80  per 
cent  of  which  is  foreign-born  ;  Hungary  Hollow,  near  Granite 
City  and  Madison,  Illinois,  another  steel-producing  community, 
established  during  the  past  seven  years,  which  is  the  center  of  a 
Bulgarian  colony  of  15,000  persons;  and  Charleroi,  Kensington, 
Tarentum,  and  Arnold,  Pennsylvania,  and  Ford  City,  Ohio,  which 
furnish  illustrations  of  glass-manufacturing  communities  of  this 
description.  Charleroi,  Pennsylvania,  is  at  present  a  city  having 
a  population  of  10,500,  composed  chiefly  of  French  and  French 
Belgians,  with  an  admixture  of  races  of  recent  immigration  from 
southern  and  eastern  Europe.  The  community  was  established  in 
1890,  when  the  first  glass  factory  was  erected,  and  has  grown  in 
size  and  importance  as  the  glass  industry  within  its  borders  has 
been  extended.  Numerous  other  communities  of  this  type  might 
be  mentioned,  but  the  foregoing  examples  will  serve  to  set  forth 
the  general  situation. 

In  both  classes  of  communities  there  has  resulted  a  distinct 
segregation  of  the  immigrant  population  which  has  been  attracted 
to  the  locality  by  the  opportunities  for  work.  Between  the  immi- 
grant colonies  which  have  affixed  themselves  to  the  industrial 
centers,  such  as  the.  New  England  textile  manufacturing  cities 
or  the  iron  and  steel  manufacturing  localities  of  Pennsylvania, 
and  the  older  native-born  portion  of  the  towns  or  cities  there  is 
little  contact  or  association  beyond  that  rendered  necessary  by 
business  or  working  relations.  The  immigrant  workmen  and  their 
households  usually  live  in  sections  or  colonies  according  to  race, 
attend  and  support  their  own  churches,  maintain  their  own  busi- 
ness institutions  and  places  of  recreation,  and  have  their  own 
fraternal  and  beneficial  organizations.  There  is  some  association 
of  the  immigrant  wage-earners  with  native  Americans  in  the 
necessary  working  relations  of  the  industrial  establishments,  and, 
in  the  case  of  communities  where  labor  unions  prevail,  the  dif- 
ferent races  of  employees  are  brought  together  for  a  common 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  273 

purpose.  Even  in  the  mines  and  industrial  establishments,  how- 
ever, there  is  a  sharp  line  of  division  in  the  occupations  or  the 
departments  in  which  recent  immigrants  and  persons  of  native 
birth  are  engaged,  and  in  unskilled  labor  the  immigrant  workmen 
are  as  a  rule  brought  together  in  gangs  composed  of  one  race 
or  closely  related  races.  Even  in  industrial  localities  which  are 
strongly  unionized,  the  extent  of  the  affiliation  of  immigrant 
workmen  with  native  Americans  is  small.  A  large  proportion 
of  the  children  of  foreign-born  parents  mingle  with  children  of 
native  birth  in  the  public  schools,  but  a  considerable  proportion 
are  also  segregated  by  race  in  the  parochial  schools.1  The  women 
of  recent  immigrant  races,  beyond  the  small  degree  of  contact 
which  they  obtain  by  work  in  factories  or  as  domestic  servants, 
in  many  cases  live  in  a  condition  entirely  removed  from  Ameri- 
canizing influences.  As  a  consequence  of  this  general  isolation  of 
immigrant  colonies,  the  tendencies  toward  assimilation  exhibited 
by  the  recent  immigrant  population  are  small,  and  the  main- 
tenance of  old  customs  and  standards  leads  to  congestion  and 
insanitary  housing  and  living  conditions.  The  native-born  ele- 
ments in  the  population  of  the  type  of  industrial  communities 
under  discussion  are  in  most  cases  ignorant  of  conditions  which 
prevail  in  immigrant  sections,  and  even  when  aware  of  them  are 
usually  found  to  be  indifferent  so  long  as  such  conditions  do  not 
become  too  pronounced  a  menace  to  the  public  health  and  wel- 
fare. Agencies  for  the  Americanization  and  assimilation  of  the 
immigrant  wage-earners  and  their  families  are  still  inadequate, 
though  a  number  of  agencies  have  recently  developed  to  meet 
this  need.  As  a  rule,  under  normal  conditions  there  is  no  antip- 
athy to  the  immigrant  population  beyond  the  feeling  uniformly  met 
with  in  all  sections  that  a  certain  stigma  or  reproach  attaches  to 
working  with  the  recent  immigrants  or  in  the  same  occupations. 
In  the  case  of  the  second  type  of  immigrant  industrial  com- 
munities, those  which  have  recently  come  into  existence  through 
industrial  development  and  which  are  almost  entirely  composed 
of  foreign-born  persons  or  in  which  the  foreign-born  elements 

1  See  Reports  of  the  Immigration  Commission,  "  Children  of  Immigrants  in 
Schools"  (6ist  Cong.,  2d  Session,  Sen.  Doc.  No.  749). 


274  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

are  predominant,  a  situation  exists  where  an  alien  colony  has  been 
established  on  American  soil,  often  composed  of  a  large  number 
of  races,  living  according  to  their  own  standards  and  largely  under 
their  own  systems  of  control,  and  practically  isolated  from  all 
direct  contact  with  American  life  and  institutions.  The  Ameri- 
canization of  such  communities,  as  compared  with  the  immigrant 
colonies  of  old-established  industrial  towns  and  cities,  must  nec- 
essarily be  slow.  As  serious  as  are  the  problems,  therefore,  pre- 
sented by  the  first-mentioned  type  of  immigrant  communities 
which  are  the  result  of  recent  industrial  expansion,  those  of  the 
second  type,  which  have  arisen  from  the  same  cause,  are  much 
greater.  In  both  cases  these  problems,  however,  are  the  general 
ones  which  confront  a  self-governing  republic  as  a  result  of  the 
influx  of  an  immigrant  population  of  alien  speech,  standards,  and 
customs,  and  may  be  more  properly  considered  in  another  con- 
nection. In  the  present  discussion  of  the  purely  industrial  aspects 
of  immigration  it  is  sufficient  to  note  that  these  immigrant  com- 
munities and  the  problems  which  they  present  are  the  direct 
outcome  of  the  extraordinary  industrial  development  which  has 
been  in  progress  in  this  country  within  recent  years.  The  suc- 
ceeding discussion  will  be  limited  to  a  consideration  of  the  effects 
of  recent  immigration  (i)  upon  native  American  and  older  immi- 
grant wage-earners,  (2)  upon  labor  organizations,  (3)  upon  indus- 
trial organizations  and  methods,  and  (4)  upon  the  establishment 
of  new  industries. 

SALIENT  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THE  RECENT  IMMIGRANT 
LABOR  SUPPLY 

The  real  significance  of  the  entrance  of  recent  immigrants  into 
American  industry  cannot  be  fully  comprehended,  however,  with- 
out taking  into  account  the  personal  and  industrial  characteristics 
of  the  wage-earners  from  southern  and  eastern  Europe  who  have 
been  employed  in  such  large  numbers.  Preliminary  to  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  industrial  effects  of  recent  immigration,  therefore, 
it  will  be  necessary  to  review  briefly  the  salient  qualities  of  the 
recent  immigrant  labor  supply. 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  275 

(a)  From  a  strictly  industrial  standpoint,  one  of  the  facts  of 
greatest  import  relative  to  the  new  arrivals  has  been,  as  already 
pointed  out,  that  an  exceedingly  small  proportion  have  had  any 
training  or  experience  while  abroad  for  the  industrial  occupations 
in  which  they  have  found  employment  in  this  country.  The 
bulk  of  recent  immigration  has  been  drawn  from  the  agricultural 
classes  of  southern  and  eastern  Europe  and  most  of  the  recent 
immigrants  were  farmers  or  farm  laborers  in  their  native  lands. 
In  this  respect  they  afford  a  striking  contrast  to  immigrants  of 
past  years  from  Great  Britain  and  northern  Europe,  who  were 
frequently  skilled  industrial  workers  before  coming  to  the  United 
States  and  who  sought  positions  in  this  country  similar  to  those 
which  they  had  occupied  abroad. 

(&)  In  addition  to  lack  of  industrial  training  and  experience, 
the  new  immigrant  labor  supply  has  been  found  to  possess  but 
small  resources  from  which  to  develop  industrial  efficiency  and 
advancement.  The  southern  and  eastern  Europeans  have,  as  a 
rule,  given  evidence  of  industriousness  and  energy,  but,  unlike 
the  races  of  older  immigration,  they  have  been  unable  to  use  the 
English  language,  and  a  large  proportion  have  been  illiterate. 
Practically  none  of  the  races  of  southern  and  eastern  Europe 
have  been  able  to  speak  English  at  the  time  of  immigration  to 
this  country,  and,  owing  to  their  segregation  and  isolation  from 
the  native  American  population  in  living  and  working  conditions, 
their  progress  in  acquiring  the  language  has  been  very  slow.  The 
incoming  supply  of  immigrant  labor  has  also  been  characterized  by 
a  high  degree  of  illiteracy.  Of  a  total  of  290,059  industrial  work- 
ers of  foreign  birth  for  whom  detailed  information  was  secured, 
17  per  cent  were  unable  to  read  and  write  and  14.8  per  cent  could 
not  read.  In  the  case  of  the  races  from  southern  and  eastern 
Europe,  the  proportions  unable  to  read  and  write  were  even  larger. 

(c)  Still  another  salient  fact  in  connection  with  the  recent 
immigrant  labor  supply  has  been  the  necessitous  condition  of  the 
newcomers  upon  their  arrival  in  American  industrial  communities 
in  search  of  work.  Recent  immigrants  have  usually  had  but  a 
few  dollars  in  their  possession  when  they  arrived  at  the  ports 
of  disembarkation.  Consequently  they  have  found  it  absolutely 


276  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

imperative  to  engage  in  work  at  once.  They  have  not  been  in 
position  to  take  exception  to  the  wages  or  working  conditions 
offered,  but  must  needs  go  to  work  on  the  most  advantageous 
terms  they  could  secure. 

(d)  The  standards  of  living  of  the  recent  industrial  workers 
from  the  south  and  east  of  Europe  have  been  low,  and  the  con- 
ditions of  employment,  as  well  as  the  rates  of  remuneration  in 
American  industry,  have  not  as  a  rule  constituted  to  them  grounds 
for  dissatisfaction.  During  the  earlier  part,  at  least,  of  their  resi- 
dence in  the  United  States,  they  have  been  content  with  living 
and  working  conditions  offered  to  them,  and  it  has  only  been 
after  the  most  earnest  solicitation,  or  sometimes  even  coercion, 
upon  the  part  of  the  older  employees,  that  they  have  been  per- 
suaded or  forced  into  protests. 

The  living  conditions  of  southern  and  eastern  Europeans  and 
the  members  of  their  households  is  shown  in  the  detailed  studies 
of  the  various  industries,  the  most  significant  indication  of  con- 
gestion and  unsatisfactory  living  arrangements  being  the  low-rent 
payments  each  month  per  capita.  The  recent  immigrant  males 
being  usually  single,  or,  if  married,  having  left  their  wives  abroad, 
have  been  able  to  adopt  in  large  measure  a  group  instead  of  a 
family  living  arrangement,  and  thereby  to  reduce  their  cost  of 
living  to  a  point  far  below  that  of  the  American  or  older  immi- 
grant in  the  same  industry  or  the  same  level  of  occupations. 
The  method  of  living  usually  followed  is  that  commonly  known 
as  the  "boarding-boss"  system.  Under  this  arrangement  a 
married  immigrant  or  his  wife,  or  a  single  man,  constitutes  the 
head  of  the  household,  which,  in  addition  to  the  family  of  the 
head,  will  usually  be  made  up  of  2  to  16  boarders  or  lodgers. 
Each  lodger  pays  the  boarding  boss  a  fixed  sum,  ordinarily  from 
$2  to  $3  per  month,  for  lodging,  cooking,  and  washing,  the  food 
being  usually  bought  by  the  boarding  boss  and  its  cost  shared 
equally  by  the  individual  members  of  the  group.  Another  com- 
mon arrangement  is  for  each  member  of  the  household  to  pur- 
chase his  own  food  and  have  it  cooked  separately.  Under  this 
general  method  of  living,  however,  which  prevails  among  the 
greater  proportion  of  the  immigrant  households,  the  entire  outlay 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  277 

for  necessary  living  expenses  of  each  adult  member  ranges  from 
$9  to  $15  each  month.  The  additional  expenditures  of  the  recent 
immigrant  wage-earners  have  been  small.  Every  effort  has  been 
made  to  save  as  much  as  possible.  The  life  interest  and  activity 
of  the  average  wage-earner  from  southern  and  eastern  Europe 
has  seemed  to  revolve  principally  about  three  points :  ( I )  to  earn 
the  largest  possible  amount  of  immediate  earnings  under  existing 
conditions  of  work ;  (2)  to  live  upon  the  basis  of  minimum  cheap- 
ness ;  and  (3)  to  save  as  much  as  possible.  Domestic  economy, 
as  well  as  all  living  arrangements,  have  been  subordinated  to  the 
desire  to  reduce  the  cost  of  living  to  its  lowest  level. 

(e)  Another  salient  quality  of  recent  immigrants  who  have 
sought  work  in  American  industries  has  frequently  been  that 
they  have  constituted  a  mobile,  migratory,  wage-earning  class, 
constrained  mainly  by  their  economic  interest,  and  move  readily 
from  place  to  place  according  to  changes  in  working  conditions 
or  fluctuations  in  the  demand  for  labor.  This  condition  of  affairs 
is  made  possible  by  the  fact  that  so  large  a  proportion  of  the 
recent  immigrant  employees,  as  already  pointed  out,  are  single 
men  or  married  men  whose  wives  are  abroad,  and  by  the  addi- 
tional fact  that  the  prevailing  method  of  living  among  immigrant 
workmen  is  such  as  to  enable  them  to  detach  themselves  from  a 
locality  or  an  occupation  whenever  they  may  wish.  Their  accu- 
mulations are  also,  as  a  rule,  in  the  form  of  cash  or  quickly  con- 
vertible into  cash.  In  brief,  the  recent  immigrant  has  no  property 
or  other  restraining  interests  which  attach  him  to  a  community, 
and  a  large  proportion  are  free  to  follow  the  best  industrial  in- 
ducements. The  transitory  characteristic  which  has  been  devel- 
oped as  a  result  of  these  conditions  is  best  illustrated  by  the 
racial  movements  from  the  larger  industrial  centers  into  railroad 
construction,  seasonal  and  other  temporary  work,  and  by  the  de- 
velopment of  a  floating  immigrant  labor  supply  handled  through 
labor  agencies  and  padrones.  There  is  also  a  pronounced 
movement,  as  in  the  racial  migrations  westward  of  bituminous- 
coal-mine  workers,  from  place  to  place  or  from  industry  to 
industry,  due  to  the  ascertainment  of  relatively  better  working  con- 
ditions or  other  inducements.  During  the  industrial  depression  of 


278  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

1907-1908  this  migratory  tendency  was  particularly  noticeable  in 
two  ways  :  (i)  By  a  large  movement  of  southern  and  eastern  Euro- 
peans out  of  the  country  because  of  the  lack  of  employment,  and 
(2)  by  the  concentration  of  those  who  remained  in  this  country 
in  localities  where  there  was  opportunity  for  employment. 

(/)  To  the  above-described  characteristics  of  recent  immigrant 
wage-earners,  should  be  added  one  other.  The  members  of  the 
larger  number  of  races  of  recent  entrance  to  the  mines,  mills, 
and  factories  as  a  rule  have  been  tractable  and  easily  managed. 
This  quality  seems  to  be  a  temperamental  one  acquired  through 
present  or  past  conditions  of  life  in  their  native  lands.  When 
aroused  by  strikes  or  other  industrial  dissensions,  some  eastern 
European  races  have  displayed  an  inclination  to  follow  their 
leaders  to  any  length,  often  to  the  point  of  extreme  violence  and 
disorder,  but  in  the  normal  life  of  the  mines,  mills,  and  factories, 
the  southern  and  eastern  Europeans  have  exhibited  a  pronounced 
tendency  toward  being  easily  managed  by  employers  and  toward 
being  imposed  upon  without  protest,  which  has  created  the  im- 
pression of  subserviency.  The  characteristic  of  tractability,  while 
strong,  is  confined,  however,  to  the  immigrant  wage-earners  of 
comparatively  short  residence. 

EFFECT  OF  THE  COMPETITION  OF  RECENT  IMMIGRANTS  UPON 
NATIVE  AMERICANS  AND  OLDER  IMMIGRANT  EMPLOYEES 

If  the  foregoing  characteristics  of  the  immigrant  labor  supply 
from  southern  and  eastern  Europe  be  borne  in  mind,  the  effect 
of  the  influx  of  recent  immigrants  upon  native  American  wage- 
earners  and  those  of  older  immigration  from  Great  Britain  and 
northern  Europe  may  be  briefly  stated.  The  remarkable  expan- 
sion in  manufacturing  and  mining  during  the  past  thirty  years, 
by  creating  a  constant  demand  for  a  relatively  small  number  of 
additional  places  for  experienced  and  trained  employees  in  super- 
visory and  skilled  positions,  has  undoubtedly  led  to  the  advance- 
ment in  the  scale  of  occupations  of  a  relatively  small  proportion 
of  native  Americans  and  of  English,  Irish,  Scotch,  Welsh,  and 
members  of  other  races  who  constituted  the  wage-earning  classes 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  279 

before  the  arrival  of  recent  immigrants.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
entrance  into  the  operating  forces  of  American  industries  of  such 
large  numbers  of  wage-earners  of  the  races  of  southern  and 
eastern  Europe  — 

(1)  Has  exposed  the  original  employees  to  unsafe  and  insani- 
tary working  conditions,  and  has  led  to  or  continued  the  imposi- 
tion of  conditions  of  employment  which  the  Americans  and  older 
immigrants   have    considered   unsatisfactory  and  in    many  cases 
unbearable  ; 

(2)  Has  brought  about  or  continued  living  conditions  and  a 
standard  of  life  with  which  the  native  American  and  older  em- 
ployees have  been  unwilling,  or  have  found  it  extremely  difficult, 
to  compete  ; 

(3)  Has  led  to  the  voluntary  or  involuntary  displacement  from 
certain   occupations  and  industries  of  the  native  American  and 
older  immigrant  employees  ; 

(4)  Has  weakened  the  labor  organizations  of  the  original  em- 
ployees, and  in  some  industries  has  led  to  their  entire  demoral- 
ization and  disruption. 

The  existence  of  unsatisfactory  working  and  living  conditions 
because  of  the  competition  of  the  recent  immigrant  has  been  due 
to  his  lack  of  industrial  training  abroad,  his  tractability  or  sub- 
serviency, and  his  low  standard  of  living.  When  the  older  em- 
ployees have  found  unsafe  and  insanitary  working  conditions 
prevailing  in  the  mines  and  industrial  establishments,  and  have 
protested,  the  recent  immigrant  employees,  usually  through  igno- 
rance of  mining  or  other  working  methods,  have  manifested  a 
willingness  to  accept  the  alleged  unsatisfactory  conditions.  The 
southern  and  eastern  European  employee  also,  because  of  his 
tractability,  necessitous  condition,  and  low  standards,  has  been 
inclined  as  a  rule  to  acquiesce  in  the  demand  upon  the  part  of 
employers  for  extra  work  or  longer  hours.  The  industrial  workers 
of  recent  immigration  have  also  accepted  without  protest  the 
system  of  so-called  company  stores  and  houses  which  prevails  so 
extensively  in  bituminous  and  anthracite  coal,  iron-ore,  and  copper 
mining,  and  other  industrial  localities.  The  impossibility  of  com- 
petition between  the  older  employees  and  those  with  standards 


280  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  living  like  the  standards  of  the  recent  immigrant,  may  be 
readily  inferred  from  what  has  already  been  said  relative  to  the 
methods  of  domestic  economy  of  immigrant  households  and  the 
cost  of  living  of  their  members.  In  addition  to  these  conditions 
brought  about  by  the  influx  of  southern  and  eastern  European 
industrial  workers,  another  factor,  mainly  psychological  in  its 
nature,  but  no  less  powerful  in  its  effect,  has  been  operative  in 
the  displacement  of  native  Americans  and  older  immigrant  em- 
ployees. In  all  industries  and  in  all  industrial  communities  a 
certain  reproach  has  come  to  be  associated  with  native  American 
or  older  immigrant  employees  who  are  engaged  in  the  same 
occupations  as  southern  and  eastern  Europeans.  This  feeling 
on  the  part  of  the  older  employees  is  mainly  due  to  the  habits 
of  life  and  conduct,  and  to  the  ready  acceptance  of  conditions 
by  recent  immigrants,  but  is  also  largely  attributable  to  the  con- 
scious or  unconscious  antipathy,  often  arising  from  ignorance  or 
prejudice,  toward  races  of  alien  customs,  institutions,  and  manner 
of  thought.  The  same  psychological  effect  was  produced  upon 
the  native  Americans  in  all  branches  of  industrial  enterprise  who 
first  came  into  working  contact  with  the  older  immigrants  from 
Great  Britain  and  northern  Europe.  In  the  decade  1840-1850, 
when  the  Irish  immigrant  girls  were  first  employed  in  the  New 
England  cotton  mills,  the  native  women  who  had  previously  been 
the  textile  operatives  protested ;  twenty  years  later  the  Irish  girls, 
after  they  had  become  firmly  fixed  in  the  industry,  rebelled  be- 
cause of  the  entrance  of  French- Canadian  girls  into  the  spinning 
rooms,  just  as  the  French-Canadian  women  are  refusing  to  be 
brought  into  close  working  relations  with  the  Polish  and  Italian 
females  who  are  entering  the  cotton  mills  at  the  present  time. 
Whatever  may  be  the  cause  of  this  aversion  of  older  employees 
to  working  by  the  side  of  the  newer  arrivals,  the  existence  of  the 
feeling  has  been  crystallized  into  one  of  the  most  potent  causes 
of  racial  substitution  in  manufacturing  and  mining  occupations. 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  281 

Racial  Displacement  in  the  Various  Industries 

The  racial  displacements  which  have  been  a  result  of  the  con- 
ditions outlined  above  have  manifested  themselves  in  three  ways. 
In  the  first  place,  a  larger  proportion  of  native  Americans  and 
older  immigrant  employees  from  Great  Britain  and  northern 
Europe  have  left  certain  industries,  such  as  bituminous  and  an- 
thracite coal  mining  and  iron  and  steel  manufacturing.  In  the 
second  place,  a  part  of  the  earlier  employees,  as  already  pointed 
out,  who  remained  in  the  industries  in  which  they  were  employed 
before  the  advent  of  the  southern  and  eastern  European  have 
been  able,  because  of  the  demand  growing  out  of  the  general 
industrial  expansion,  to  attain  to  the  more  skilled  and  responsible 
technical  and  executive  positions  which  required  employees  of 
training  and  experience.  In  the  larger  number  of  cases,  where 
the  older  employees  remained  in  a  certain  industry  after  the 
pressure  of  the  competition  of  the  recent  immigrant  had  begun 
to  be  felt,  they  relinquished  their  former  occupations  and  segre- 
gated themselves  in  certain  occupations.  This  tendency  is  best 
illustrated  by  the  distribution  of  employees  according  to  race  in 
the  bituminous  coal  mines.  In  this  industry  all  the  so-called 
"  company  "  occupations,  which  are  paid  on  the  basis  of  a  daily, 
weekly,  or  monthly  rate,  are  occupied  by  native  Americans  or 
older  immigrants  and  their  children,  while  the  southern  and 
eastern  Europeans  are  confined  to  pick  mining  and  to  the  un- 
skilled and  common  labor.  The  same  situation  exists  in  iron 
and  steel  and  glass  manufacturing,  the  textile  manufacturing  in- 
dustries, and  in  all  divisions  of  manufacturing  enterprise.  It  is 
largely  due  to  the  reproach  which  has  become  attached  to  the 
fact  of  working  in  the  same  occupations  as  the  southern  and 
eastern  Europeans  that  in  some  cases,  as  in  the  bituminous  coal- 
mining industry,  has  led  to  the  segregation  of  the  older  class  of 
employees  in  occupations  which,  from  the  standpoint  of  compensa- 
tion, are  less  desirable  than  those  occupied  by  recent  immigrants. 
In  most  industries  the  native  Americans  and  older  immigrant 
workmen  who  have  remained  in  the  same  occupations  as  those 
in  which  the  recent  immigrants  are  predominant  are  made  up  of 


282  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  thriftless,  unprogressive  elements  of  the  original  operating 
forces.  The  third  striking  feature  resulting  from  the  competition 
of  southern  and  eastern  Europeans  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  in 
the  case  of  most  industries,  such  as  iron  and  steel,  textile,  and 
glass  manufacturing  and  the  different  forms  of  mining,  the  chil- 
dren of  native  Americans  and  older  immigrants  from  Great 
Britain  and  northern  Europe  are  not  entering  the  industries  in 
which  their  fathers  have  been  employed.  Manufacturers  of  all 
kinds  claim  that  they  are  unable  to  secure  a  sufficient  number 
of  native-born  employees  to  insure  the  development  of  the  neces- 
sary number  of  workmen  to  fill  the  positions  of  skill  and  respon- 
sibility in  their  establishments.  This  condition  of  affairs  is 
attributable  to  three  factors  :  ( I )  General  or  technical  education 
has  enabled  a  considerable  number  of  the  children  of  the  indus- 
trial workers  of  the  passing  generation  to  command  business, 
professional,  or  technical  occupations  more  desirable  than  those 
of  their  fathers  ;  (2)  the  conditions  of  work  which  the  employ- 
ment of  recent  immigrants  has  largely  made  possible  have 
rendered  certain  industrial  occupations  unattractive  to  the  pro- 
spective wage-earner  of  native  birth  ;  and  (3)  occupations  other 
than  those  in  which  southern  and  eastern  Europeans  are  engaged 
are  sought  for  the  reason  that  popular  opinion  attaches  to  them 
a  higher  degree  of  respectability. 

It  is  obviously  extremely  difficult  to  form  generalizations  as  to 
the  effect  of  the  competition  of  recent  immigrant  industrial  work- 
ers upon  native  Americans  and  employees  of  the  immigration  of 
former  years  without  referring  to  certain  industries  and  taking  into 
account  certain  exceptions.  The  general  displacements  and  their 
causes,  it  is  believed,  as  applicable  to  manufacturing  and  mining 
as  a  whole  are  succinctly  set  forth  above.  Specific  reference  as 
to  the  conditions  in  any  of  the  principal  industries  may  be  had 
by  referring  to  the  detailed  reports.1  In  the  present  connection, 
for  the  purpose  of  illustrating  the  points  already  made,  a  brief 
account  is  submitted  of  the  racial  movements  to  and  racial  dis- 
placements in  several  representative  industries.  No  other  large 

1  Reports  of  the  Immigration  Commission,  "Immigrants  in  Industries"  (Gist 
Cong.,  2d  Session,  Sen.  Doc.  -No.  633). 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  283 

industry  in  the  United  States,  with  the  possible  exception  of  iron 
and  steel  and  textile  manufacturing,  has  absorbed  such  a  number 
of  recent  immigrants  or  such  a  diversity  of  races  as  bituminous 
coal  mining,  and  the  racial  movements  to,  and  displacements  in, 
the  operating  forces  of  the  bituminous  coal  mines  may  be  set  forth 
as  representative  of  the  situation  which  has  developed  to  a  more 
or  less  marked  degree  in  the  other  leading  industries  of  the 
country. 

Bituminous  Coal-Mining  Fields 

Remarkable  development  has  been  in  progress  in  the  bitu- 
minous coal-producing  areas  of  Pennsylvania  during  the  past 
forty  years.  A  conception  of  the  expansion  in  bituminous  mining 
operations  in  this  State  during  the  period  mentioned  may  be 
gathered  from  the  fact  that  the  output  in  short  tons  was 
150,143,177  in  1907,  as  compared  with  7,798,518  short  tons  in 
1870,  and  by  the  additional  fact  that  the  average  number  of  wage- 
earners  in  bituminous  coal  mining  in  1907  was  163,295,  as 
contrasted  with  only  16,851  in  1870.  During  the  decade  1880- 
1890,  the  operating  forces  of  the  Pennsylvania  bituminous  mines 
consisted  of  native  Americans  and  members  of  the  English,  Irish, 
Scotch,  Welsh,  and  German  races  who  had,  as  a  rule,  been  prac- 
tical miners  before  immigrating  to  this  country,  and  who  after 
their  arrival  in  the  United  States,  as  might  be  expected,  sought 
work  in  the  industry  in  which  they  had  had  experience  abroad. 
The  predominance  of  mine  workers  from  Great  Britain  and 
northern  Europe  continued  up  to  1890,  but  after  that  year  the 
entrance  of  these  races  into  the  bituminous  coal  mines  practically 
stopped.  Because  of  the  rapid  development  of  the  industry  and 
the  consequent  need  of  labor,  Slovaks  had  been  employed  in  the 
Pennsylvania  mines  as  early  as  1880.  This  race  was  soon  followed 
by  the  Magyars  or  Hungarians,  Poles,  North  and  South  Italians, 
Croatians,  Russians,  Bulgarians,  Roumanians,  Ruthenians,  Syrians, 
Armenians,  and  Servians.  These  races  from  southern  and  eastern 
Europe,  particularly  the  Slovaks,  Magyars,  Poles,  and  Italians, 
have  gradually  supplanted  the  older  immigrants  in  the  less  skilled 
and  responsible  positions,  and  during  the  past  ten  years  have  not 


284  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

only  gained  the  ascendancy  in  numbers  but  have  also  begun  to 
advance  in  the  scale  of  occupations.  The  pioneer  operatives, 
under  the  increasing  pressure  and  competition  which  arose  from 
the  influx  of  the  southern  and  eastern  European  immigrants, 
have,  in  constantly  growing  numbers  since  1890,  left  the  Penn- 
sylvania coal  fields  for  localities  in  the  Middle  West  or  Southwest 
in  search  of  better  working  conditions  or,  on  the  other  hand,  have 
entirely  abandoned  the  coal  industry  to  engage  in  other  pursuits 
made  available  by  the  industrial  development  which  has  been  in 
progress  in  western  Pennsylvania  during  the  same  period  as  that 
in  which  the  expansion  of  bituminous  coal-mining  operations  oc- 
curred. Those  that  remained  in  the  bituminous  mines  have  in 
most  cases  attained  to  the  skilled  and  responsible  executive 
positions  created  by  the  development  of  the  industry,  such  as 
those  of  engineers  and  foremen. 

An  extraordinary  and  similar  expansion  in  coal  mining  was  in 
progress  during  the  same  period  in  the  Middle  West  and  the 
Southwest  as  in  Pennsylvania.  In  1870,  in  the  States  of  Ohio, 
Indiana,  and  Illinois,  5,589,318  short  tons  of  coal  were  mined, 
and  15,237  men  were  employed,  as  compared  with  an  output  of 
97,445,278  short  tons  and  an  operating  force  of  133,436  men 
in  1907.  The  greatest  development  in  the  Southwest  came 
somewhat  later. 

In  the  Middle  West,  as  in  the  State  of  Pennsylvania,  there 
were  very  few  mine  workers  prior  to  1890  who  were  not  native 
Americans  or  representatives  of  races  from  Great  Britain  and 
Germany.  Races  of  southern  and  eastern  Europe,  principally 
North  and  South  Italians,  Lithuanians,  Poles,  Russians,  French, 
and  French  Belgians,  entered  the  Ohio,  Indiana,  and  Illinois 
fields  during  the  decade  1890-1900,  and  during  the  past  ten 
years  have  rapidly  increased  in  numbers.  The  races  of  older  im- 
migration, however,  have  never  lost  the  ascendancy  in  the  mines 
of  the  Middle  West,  because  of  a  large  migration  to  that  section 
of  English,  Irish,  Scotch,  Welsh,  and  German  miners  from  Penn- 
sylvania and  West  Virginia  during  the  ten  years  1890-1900,  as 
mentioned  above.  But  the  miners  of  northern  Europe  and  Great 
Britain  did  not  remain  permanently  in  the  coal  fields  of  the 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  285 

Middle  West.  Many  of  them,  in  the  effort  to  attain  more  satis- 
factory working  conditions,  when  the  pressure  of  recent  immigra- 
tion began  to  be  felt,  moved  onward  to  the  newly  opened  mines 
of  the  Southwest.  Moreover,  at  the  same  time  that  the  natives 
and  older  immigrants  were  leaving  the  West  Virginia  and  Penn- 
sylvania mines  for  those  of  Ohio,  Indiana,  and  Illinois,  others 
migrated  directly  to  the  coal  fields  of  Oklahoma  (then  Indian 
Territory).  As  a  matter  of  fact,  when  the  mines  of  Kansas  and 
Oklahoma  were,  in  the  year  1880,  first  opened  on  a  commercial 
basis,  the  operating  forces  were  brought  by  special  trains  and 
carloads  from  Pennsylvania  and  the  Middle  West.  The  Americans, 
English,  Irish,  and  Scotch  were  predominant  among  these  pioneer 
mine  workers,  although  there  were  among  them  a  few  repre- 
sentatives of  the  German,  Polish,  Lithuanian,  French,  and  Croatian 
races.  The  rapid  increase  of  the  British  and  northern  European 
races  continued  in  Oklahoma  (then  Indian  Territory)  up  to  1890, 
and  in  Kansas  until  1895.  In  1890,  the  Americans,  English, 
Irish,  and  Scotch  in  large  numbers  left  the  Oklahoma  mines  and 
sought  employment  in  the  Kansas  fields.  The  number  of  mining 
employees  in  the  Southwest  belonging  to  races  of  southern  and 
eastern  Europe  rapidly  increased  in  the  twenty  years  subsequent 
to  1890,  this  supply  of  labor  being  used  to  take  the  places  of  the 
natives  and  older  immigrants  who  left  Oklahoma  after  1890,  and 
to  meet  the  demand  for  labor  growing  out  of  the  expansion  in 
the  coal  industry  in  both  Oklahoma  and  Kansas.  During  the 
same  period,  and  especially  since  1900,  there  has  also  been  a 
movement,  of  smaller  extent  but  quite  pronounced,  of  the  natives, 
English,  Irish,  Scotch,  and  Welsh,  farther  to  the  West  and 
Southwest.  Some  have  left  Kansas  and  Oklahoma  for  the  re- 
cently developed  mines  of  Texas  and  New  Mexico.  Others  have 
gone  to  the  bituminous  mining  fields  of  Colorado.  A  small  num- 
ber have  forsaken  coal  mining  for  the  Colorado  and  other  gold 
fields,  and  a  considerable  proportion,  especially  of  the  second 
generation  of  English,  Irish,  Scotch,  and  Welsh,  have  engaged 
in  lead  and  zinc  mining  in  Missouri. 

Of  the  total  number  of  bituminous  mine  workers  at  present, 
slightly   more    than    three  fifths    are    foreign-born.    Among   the 


286  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

foreign-born  comparatively  small  proportions  are  of  the  English, 
Irish,  Scotch,  Welsh,  and  German  races  of  the  older  immigra- 
tion ;  the  greater  part  of  the  persons  of  foreign  birth  are  Croatians, 
North  and  South  Italians,  Lithuanians,  Magyars,  Poles,  Russians, 
Slovaks,  Slovenians,  and  other  races  of  recent  immigration.  The 
South  exhibits  the  lowest  percentage  of  foreign-born  mining 
employees  and  Pennsylvania  the  highest. 

The  racial  substitutions  in,  and  the  present  racial  composition 
of,  the  operating  forces  of  the  bituminous  coal  mines  of  the 
country  may  be  considered  typical  of  all  other  extractive  indus- 
tries, with  the  exception  of  agriculture.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
racial  movements  to  the  cotton-goods  manufacturing  industry  may 
be  presented  as  representative  of  conditions  in  the  different 
branches  of  manufacturing  industry  in  which  the  factory  system 
has  reached  its  highest  form  of  development. 

Ncit>  England  Cotton  Mills 

The  first  employees  for  the  New  England  cotton  mills  were 
secured  almost  exclusively  from  the  farm  and  village  population 
immediately  adjacent  to  the  early  cotton-goods  manufacturing 
centers.  These  employees  consisted  in  the  main  of  the  children 
of  farmers,  usually  the  daughters,  who  undertook  work  in  the 
mills  for  the  purpose  of  assisting  their  fathers  or  in  order  to  lay 
aside  sums  for  their  own  dowries.  The  young  women  were 
attractive  and,  as  a  rule,  well  educated,  and  the  young  men  sober, 
intelligent,  and  reliable.  At  the  time  of  the  erection  of  the  first 
modern  cotton  mills,  about  icSi3,  there  was  a  strong  prejudice  in 
New  England  against  the  so-called  factory  system,  because  of  the 
conditions  which  prevailed  among  cotton-mill  operatives  in  Great 
Britain.  As  a  consequence,  the  chief  endeavor  of  the  promoters 
of  the  new  industry  was  to  secure  housing  and  living  conditions 
Under  such  restrictions  as  would  warrant  the  parents  of  New 
England  in  permitting  their  sons  and  daughters  to  enter  the  mills. 
This  policy  was  successful,  and  sufficient  labor  rapidly  moved  into 
the  new  textile  manufacturing  towns. 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  287 

In  the  light  of  the  changed  conditions  which  afterwards  became 
prevalent  in  the  New  England  textile  manufacturing  towns  it  will 
be  instructive  to  consider  somewhat  in  detail  this  early  class  of 
operatives  and  the  conditions  under  which  they  lived.  A  distin- 
guished French  traveler,  who  visited  the  United  States  in  1834, 
in  the  words  which  follow  gave  his  impressions  of  the  operatives  of 
Lowell,  Massachusetts,  Lowell  then  being  the  most  representative 
cotton-goods  manufacturing  center  in  New  England.1  He  stated: 

The  cotton  manufacture  alone  employs  6000  persons  in  Lowell.  Of  this 
number  nearly  5000  are  young  women  from  17  to  24  years  of  age,  the 
daughters  of  farmers  from  the  different  New  England  States,  and  particularly 
from  Massachusetts,  New  Hampshire,  and  Vermont.  They  are  here  remote 
from  their  families  and  under  their  own  control.  On  seeing  them  pass  through 
the  streets  in  the  morning  and  evening  and  at  their  meal  hours,  neatly  dressed  ; 
on  finding  their  scarfs  and  shawls,  and  green  silk  hoods  which  they  wear  as  a 
shelter  from  the  sun  and  dust  (for  Lowell  is  not  yet  paved),  hanging  up  in  the 
factories  amidst  flowers  and  shrubs,  which  they  cultivate,  I  said  to  myself, 
"  This,  then,  is  not  like  Manchester " ;  and  when  I  was  informed  of  the 
rate  of  their  wages  I  understood  that  it  was  not  at  all  like  Manchester. 

The  measures  which  made  possible  this  intelligent  and  efficient 
class  of  operatives  are  explained  by  a  later  historian  of  Lowell.2 
The  author  states  : 

While  devoting  his  inventive  skill  in  the  perfecting  of  machinery,  Mr. 
Lowell  gave  considerable  thought  to  the  improvement  of  those  he  employed. 
He  had  seen  the  degraded  state  of  operatives  in  England,  and  his  chief 
endeavor,  next  after  the  fitting  of  his  mill,  was  to  insure  such  domestic  com- 
forts and  restrictions  as  would  warrant  the  parents  of  New  England  in  letting 
their  daughters  enter  his  employment.  He  provided  boarding  houses  con- 
ducted by  reputable  women,  furnished  opportunities  for  religious  worship,  and 
established  rules  which  were  a  safeguard  against  the  evils  which  assail  the 
young  who  are  beyond  parental  supervision.  .  .  . 

When  the  —  —  mills  were  first  established  the  operatives  were  drawn  from 
the  towns  and  villages  of  New  England.  They  were  sober,  industrious,  and 
reliable  people.  The  building  of  the  mills  attracted  immigrant  labor.  It  was 
also  of  a  sober  and  reliable  quality,  for  fares  were  high  in  those  days  and  it 

1  Chevalier,  United  States,  1834,  p.  137. 

2  Bayles,  Lowell:  Past,  Present,  and  Prospective,  pp.  7-15. 


288  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

was  only  those  who  were  seeking  homes  that  came  to  the  new  town  of  Lowell. 
This  foreign  labor  mingled  with  the  native  element  and  imbibed  the  best  of 
its  many  admirable  qualities.  .  .  . 

As  the  industries  developed,  there  was  demand  for  men  skilled  in  the  art 
of  calico  printing,  and  a  superior  class  of  workmen  accordingly  came  from 
England  and  from  other  countries  to  add  their  intelligent  influence  to  the 
moral  progress  of  the  community.  .  .  . 

The  corporations  were  under  necessity  to  provide  food  and  shelter  for 
those  they  employed.  They  adopted  Mr.  Lowell's  plan  so  effectively  instituted 
at  Waltham,  and  built  boarding  and  tenement  houses.  Over  these  a  rigid 
supervision  was  maintained.  The  food  in  the  former  was  required  to  be  of  a 
certain  standard.  The  rules  governing  the  conduct  of  those  who  lived  in  the 
boarding  houses  were  rather  strict,  but  they  were  wholesome. 

One  of  the  New  England  girls  who  worked  in  the  Lowell 
mills  during  this  period  has  given  an  interesting  account  of  the 
situation  which  existed  during  her  employment.  In  writing  of 
the  methods  by  which  the  mill  girls  were  secured,  and  the  con- 
ditions under  which  they  lived  and  worked,  her  description  affords 
a  pleasing  contrast  with  the  Lowell  of  the  present.1  She  writes  : 

Troops  of  young  girls  came  by  stages  and  baggage  wagons,  men  often 
being  employed  to  go  to  other  States  and  to  Canada  to  collect  them  at  so 
much  per  head  and  deliver  them  to  the  factories. 

A  very  curious  sight  these  country  girls  presented  to  young  eyes  accustomed 
to  a  more  modern  style  of  things.  When  the  large  covered  baggage  wagon 
arrived  in  front  of  a  block  of  the  corporation  they  would  descend  from  it, 
dressed  in  various  and  outlandish  fashions,  and  with  their  arms  brimful  of 
bandboxes  containing  all  their  worldly  goods.  On  each  of  these  was  sewed  a 
card,  on  which  one  could  read  the  old-fashioned  New  England  name  of  the 
owner.  .  .  . 

Except  in  rare  instances,  the  rights  of  the  early  mill  girls  were  secure.  They 
were  subject  to  no  extortion ;  if  they  did  extra  work  they  were  always  paid  in 
full,  and  their  own  account  of  labor  done  by  the  piece  was  always  accepted. 
They  kept  the  figures  and  were  paid  accordingly.  This  was  notably  the  case 
with  the  weavers  and  drawing-in  girls.  Though  the  hours  of  labor  were  long, 
they  were  not  overworked ;  they  were  obliged  to  tend  no  more  looms  and 
frames  than  they  could  easily  take  care  of,  and  they  had  plenty  of  time  to  sit 
and  rest.  .  .  . 

Their  life  in  the  factory  was  made  pleasant  to  them.  In  those  days  there 
was  no  need  of  advocating  the  doctrine  of  the  proper  relation  between  employer 
and  employed. .  .  . 

1  Robinson,  Loom  and  Spindle. 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  289 

The  knowledge  of  the  antecedents  of  these  operatives  was  the  safeguard  of 
their  liberties.  The  majority  of  them  were  as  well  born  as  their  "overlookers," 
if  not  better ;  and  they  were  also  far  better  educated.  .  .  . 

Those  of  the  mill  girls  who  had  homes  generally  worked  from  eight  to  ten 
months  in  the  year ;  the  rest  of  the  time  was  spent  with  parents  or  friends. 
A  few  taught  school  during  the  summer  months.  .  .  . 

The  life  in  the  boarding  houses  was  very  agreeable.  These  houses  belonged 
to  the  corporation,  and  were  usually  kept  by  widows  (mothers  of  mill  girls) 
who  were  often  the  friends  and  advisers  of  their  boarders.  .  .  . 

Each  house  was  a  village  or  community  of  itself.  There  fifty  or  sixty  young 
women  from  different  parts  of  New  England  met  and  lived  together.  When 
not  at  their  work,  by  natural  selection  they  sat  in  groups  in  their  chambers,  or 
in  a  corner  of  the  large  dining  room,  busy  at  some  agreeable  employment ;  or 
they  wrote  letters,  read,  studied,  or  sewed,  for,  as  a  rule,  they  were  their  own 
seamstresses  and  dressmakers. 

Charles  Dickens,  during  his  tour  of  the  United  States,  visited 
Lowell  and  has  recorded  his  observations  in  his  American  Notes. 
Concerning  the  American  girl  operatives  and  the  impression  they 
made  upon  him,  he  had  the  following  to  say : 1 

These  girls,  as  I  have  said,  were  all  well  dressed ;  and  that  phrase  neces- 
sarily includes  extreme  cleanliness.  They  had  serviceable  bonnets,  good  warm 
cloaks  and  shawls,  and  were  not  above  clogs  and  pattens.  Moreover,  there 
were  places  in  the  mill  in  which  they  could  deposit  these  things  without  injury; 
and  there  were  conveniences  for  washing.  They  were  healthy  in  appearance, 
many  of  them  remarkably  so,  and  had  the  manners  and  deportment  of  young 
women ;  not  of  degraded  brutes  of  burden.  .  .  . 

The  rooms  in  which  they  worked  were  as  well  ordered  as  themselves.  In 
the  windows  of  some  there  were  green  plants,  which  were  trained  to  shade  the 
glass ;  in  all,  there  was  as  much  fresh  air,  cleanliness,  and  comfort  as  the 
nature  of  the  occupation  would  possibly  admit  of.  Out  of  so  large  a  number  of 
females,  many  of  whom  were  only  then  just  verging  upon  womanhood,  it  may 
be  reasonably  supposed  that  some  were  delicate  and  fragile  in  appearance ;  no 
doubt  there  were.  But  I  solemnly  declare  that,  from  all  the  crowd  I  saw  in 
the  different  factories  that  day,  I  cannot  recall  or  separate  one  young  face  that 
gave  me  a  painful  impression ;  not  one  young  girl  whom,  assuming  it  to  be  a 
matter  of  necessity  that  she  should  gain  her  daily  bread  by  the  labor  of  her 
hands,  I  would  have  removed  from  those  works  if  I  had  had  the  power.  .  .  . 

I  am  now  going  to  state  three  facts  which  will  startle  a  large  class  of  readers 
on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  very  much. 

1  Charles  Dickens,  American  Notes,  1841,  pp.  56-57. 


290  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Firstly,  there  is  a  joint-stock  piano  in  a  great  many  of  the  boarding  houses. 
Secondly,  nearly  all  these  young  ladies  subscribe  to  circulating  libraries. 
Thirdly,  they  have  got  up  among  themselves  a  periodical." 

The  state  of  affairs  and  the  operative  class  described  above  contin- 
ued until  about  1 840,  when  the  expansion  of  the  industry  exceeded 
the  local  labor  resources  and  it  became  necessary  to  secure  opera- 
tives from  localities  in  this  country  outside  of  New  England,  as 
well  as  from  Canada,  Great  Britain,  and  northern  Europe. 

Immigration  to  the  industry  from  Canada  and  Great  Britain 
was  characteristic  of  the  period  1840-1880.  Members  of  the 
English,  Irish,  and  Scotch  races,  as  already  mentioned,  immi- 
grated to  the  New  England  cotton  goods'  centers  at  an  early 
date.  Small  numbers  of  skilled  English  operatives  were  secured 
from  the  British  textile-manufacturing  towns  in  the  early  history 
of  the  development  of  the  industry  in  New  England.  Consider- 
able numbers  of  Irish  were  also  employed  in  the  unskilled  work 
in  connection  with  the  erection  of  the  mills  and  the  construction 
of  the  locks  and  canals  in  certain  localities,  such  as  Lowell,  to 
furnish  the  necessary  water  power.  Although  these  races  con- 
tinued to  enter  the  industry,  the  heavy  immigration  of  the  Irish 
did  not  set  in  until  after  1840,  and  of  the  English  until  thirty 
years  later.  The  Irish  were  employed  in  the  mills  in  the  largest 
numbers  during  the  forties  and  fifties  and  the  English  during 
the  seventies,  both  races,  however,  continuing  to  seek  work  in 
the  cotton  mills  in  gradually  diminishing  numbers  up  to  1895. 
Although  the  Scotch  and  Germans  were  early  settlers  in  the  mill 
towns  and  have  always  been  represented  among  the  cotton-mill 
operatives,  the  extent  to  which  these  races  have  been  employed 
in  the  industry  has  always  been  of  comparatively  small  impor- 
tance. By  the  year  1895  the  immigration  of  all  races  from  Great 
Britain  and  northern  Europe  to  the  cotton-goods  manufacturing 
centers  of  the  North  Atlantic  States  had  practically  stopped. 

As  soon  as  the  expansion  of  the  cotton  industry  in  New  Eng- 
land rendered  it  necessary  to  go  beyond  the  local  labor  supply, 
an  attempt  was  made  to  secure  operatives  from  Canada.  Consid- 
erable numbers  of  French-Canadians  entered  the  mills  during  the 
fifties,  but  the  heaviest  immigration  of  this  race  was  during  the 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  291 

period  of  ten  years  following  immediately  upon  the  close  of  the 
civil  war.  During  the  next  thirty-five  years  they  continued  to 
arrive  in  large  numbers,  but  during  the  past  decade  small  addi- 
tions to  the  operating  forces  have  been  made  by  this  race. 

Since  the  year  1885,  and  especially  during  the  past  fifteen 
years,  the  operatives  of  the  cotton  mills  have  been  mainly  recruited 
from  the  races  of  southern  and  eastern  Europe  and  from  the 
Orient.  There  were  very  few  representatives  of  these  races  in 
the  mills  before  1890.  During  the  decade  1890-1900,  however, 
the  movement  of  races  from  the  south  and  east  of  Europe  set  in 
rapidly.  Immigration  from  Great  Britain  and  northern  Europe, 
as  already  noticed,  had  practically  ceased,  and  from  Canada  was 
on  a  reduced  basis  as  compared  with  former  years.  Of  the  new 
immigrant  operatives,  the  Greeks,  Portuguese  and  Bravas  from 
the  Western  Islands,  Poles,  Russians,  and  Italians  came  in  the 
largest  numbers.  During  the  past  ten  years  the  immigration  of 
all  the  above-mentioned  races  has  continued  in  undiminished  pro- 
portions. Other  races  have  also  sought  work  in  the  cotton  mills, 
the  most  important  in  point  of  numbers  having  been  the  Lith- 
uanians, Hebrews,  Syrians,  Bulgarians,  and  Turks.  At  the  pres- 
ent time  immigration  from  the  older  sources  has  ceased  or  been 
reduced  to  unimportant  proportions,  and  the  races  of  recent  immi- 
gration, so  far  as  numbers  are  concerned,  are  rapidly  attaining 
an  ascendancy  in  the  industry. 

The  Americans,  who  formerly  composed  the  bulk  of  the  cotton- 
mill  operatives  in  the  North  Atlantic  States,  at  the  present  time 
form  only  about  one  tenth  of  the  total  number  of  the  employees 
in  the  cotton  mills,  and  are  divided  in  about  equal  proportions 
between  males  and  females.  If  the  employees  of  the  second  gen- 
eration of  immigrant  races,  or,  in  other  words,  persons  native- 
born  of  foreign  father,  be  added  to  this  pure  American  stock,  or 
those  native-born  of  native  father,  the  total  number  of  native- 
born  operatives  amounts  to  about  three  tenths  of  the  operating 
forces  of  the  North  Atlantic  mills.  The  remaining  part  of  the 
operatives,  or  about  seven  tenths,  is  composed  of  employees  of 
foreign  birth.  Of  the  total  foreign-born  operatives,  about  one  half 
are  representatives  of  races  of  southern  and  eastern  Europe  and 


292  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  Orient,  the  remainder  being  composed  mainly  of  English, 
Irish,  and  French-Canadians,  with  a  relatively  small  number  of 
Scotch,  Germans,  Swedes,  Dutch,  and  French.  The  French- 
Canadians,  among  the  foreign-born,  are  employed  at  present  in 
greater  proportions  than  any  other  race,  the  proportion  of  French- 
Canadian  cotton-mill  operatives  exceeding  that  of  the  Americans. 
The  English  furnish  about  one  tenth  and  the  Irish  about  one 
twentieth  of  the  total  number  of  employees  in  the  industry.  Of 
the  operatives  from  southern  and  eastern  Europe,  the  Poles,  Por- 
tuguese, and  Greeks,  in  the  order  named,  furnish  the  largest  pro- 
portions, the  total  number  of  these  races  constituting  more  than 
one  fourth  of  the  total  number  employed.  More  than  thirty  other 
races  from  southern  and  eastern  Europe  are  working  in  the 
cotton  mills  of  the  North  Atlantic  States ;  the  North  and  South 
Italians,  Lithuanians,  and  Russians  are  numerically  the  most  im- 
portant. Several  oriental  races,  including  Turks,  Persians,  and 
Syrians,  are  also  found.  The  larger  part  of  the  female  employees 
at  the  present  time  is  made  up  of  English,  Irish,  and  French- 
Canadian  operatives,  of  both  the  first  and  second  generations, 
together  with  large  proportions  of  Portuguese  and  Polish  women. 
The  American  females,  as  already  stated,  form  only  about  one 
tenth  of  the  total  number  of  female  operatives. 

Fall  River,  New  Bedford,  and  Lowell,  Massachusetts,  Man- 
chester, New  Hampshire,  and  other  centers  of  the  same  sort,  all 
have  a  large  proportion  of  French-Canadians,  Manchester  show- 
ing the  highest  percentage  of  employees  of  that  race.  Manchester 
has  also  the  largest  proportion  of  Polish  operatives,  although  that 
race  is  well  represented  in  the  other  three  cities.  The  Irish  and 
English,  who  are  employed  extensively  in  all  localities,  have  their 
largest  representation  in  Lowell  and  New  Bedford.  The  Portu- 
guese are  employed  in  largest  proportions  in  New  Bedford  and 
Fall  River.  Only  an  unimportant  percentage  of  Greeks  are  work- 
ing in  Fall  River  and  New  Bedford,  but  in  Manchester,  New 
Hampshire,  the  Greeks  make  up  one  twentieth,  and  in  Lowell 
more  than  one-seventh,  of  the  total  number  of  operatives.  The 
other  races  are  scattered  in  comparatively  small  numbers  through 
all  the  localities. 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  293 

/ 
Clothing-Manufacturing  Industry 

The  manufacture  of  clothing  is  based  upon  another  form  of 
industrial  organization  and  has  an  operating  force  of  a  different 
character  from  that  of  the  textiles  or  bituminous  coal  mining.  A 
brief  review  of  the  racial  substitutions  which  have  occurred  in  the 
industry  will  therefore  be  of  value,  and  a  history  of  the  racial 
changes  which  have  occurred  in  connection  with  the  industry  in 
the  large  clothing  manufacturing  centers  of  Chicago,  New  York, 
and  Baltimore  may  be  considered  as  representative  of  racial  dis- 
placements in  the  industry  as  a  whole. 

From  the  beginning  until  as  late  as  1 890  Germans  were  almost 
exclusively  employed  in  shops  and  by  establishments  engaged  in 
the  manufacturing  of  clothing  in  Baltimore,  Maryland.  During 
the  past  twenty  years,  however,  a  very  large  number  of  Russian 
Hebrews  have  come  to  this  locality,  most  of  whom  have  obtained 
employment  in  this  industry.  Although  many  of  this  race  were 
tailors  by  trade,  they  entered  the  less  skilled  occupations  in  the 
shops  and  factories  of  Baltimore.  A  very  short  time  afterwards, 
or  in  1895,  the  Lithuanians  entered  the  industry,  and  they  were 
followed,  in  1900,  by  the  Bohemians,  Poles,  Italians,  and  repre- 
sentatives of  a  few  of  the  other  races  from  Austria-Hungary. 
Since  1905,  the  Russian  Hebrew,  Lithuanian,  and  Italian  have 
been  the  principal  races  from  which  the  manufacturers  have  ob- 
tained their  necessary  supply  of  labor.  The  early  history  of  cloth- 
ing manufacturing  establishments  in  Chicago  differs  from  that  of 
the  establishments  in  Baltimore,  in  that  not  only  the  Germans 
but  German  Jews,  Bohemians,  and  a  few  Americans  and  Poles 
were  the  first  employees.  About  fifteen  years  ago  the  Scandi- 
navians entered  the  industry  and  within  a  short  time  became  very 
proficient.  Following  the  Scandinavians  came  the  Russian  Jews, 
who  were  employed  prior  to  either  the  Italians  or  Lithuanians. 
In  recent  years,  however,  the  number  of  Russian  Jews  entering 
the  industry  has  increased  rapidly,  and  it  is  from  this  source  that 
clothing  manufacturing  establishments  have  secured  the  greater 
proportion  of  employees.  Unlike  the  tailoring  shops  of  Baltimore 
and  Chicago,  those  in  New  York  depended  originally  upon  the 


294  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Irish,  who  predominated  from  1850  to  1888.  The  introduction 
of  machines  has  made  it  possible  to  employ  a  less  intelligent  and 
less  skilled  force  than  when  all  work  was  done  by  hand.  From 
1865  to  1888  a  few  Swedes,  and  from  1880  to  1890  the  Ger- 
mans, entered  the  industry.  Russian  and  Polish  Hebrews  first 
obtained  employment  in  large  numbers  from  1890  to  1895,  while 
the  Italians,  many  of  whom  were  employed  as  early  as  1880, 
entered  the  industry  in  largely  increased  numbers  in  1895,  and 
are  now  supplanting  the  Russian  Hebrews. 

Glass  Manufacturing 

Racial  displacements  in  the  glass  manufacturing  industry  are 
of  peculiar  interest  because  of  the  invention  of  machinery  within 
recent  years  which  has  made  possible  the  extensive  employment 
of  unskilled  labor  in  factories  engaged  in  the  manufacture  of  plate 
and  window  glass  and  glass  bottles.  In  the  early  development  of 
the  industry,  it  was  necessary  to  secure  skilled  glassworkers  from 
glass  manufacturing  centers  in  Europe.  At  the  present  time  it  is 
possible  to  recruit  a  large  proportion  of  the  operating  forces  from 
the  untrained  and  inexperienced  immigrant  labor  supply  of  south- 
ern and  eastern  Europe.  A  brief  account  of  the  history  of  im- 
migration within  recent  years  to  a  number  of  representative  glass 
manufacturing  localities  in  different  sections  of  the  country  will 
illustrate  the  racial  displacements  which  have  occurred  in  the 
industry.1 

Community  A 

The  total  population  of  the  town  is  about  2600,  and  its  his- 
tory of  immigration  is  contained  in  the  history  of  the  racial 
changes  which  have  taken  place  in  the  glass  plant. 

The  plate-glass  plant  was  started  in  1886,  as  the  property  of 
an  important  glass  company,  with  a  nucleus  of  Belgian,  English, 
and  German  workers  who  were  brought  from  other  plants  of  the 
company  in  the  United  States  to  serve  as  skilled  workers.  All  of 
the  work  at  that  time  was  done  by  hand,  and  native  Americans 

1  The  description  of  only  one  of  these  communities  is  here  reproduced. —  ED. 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  295 

served  as  unskilled  laborers  and  were  apprenticed  with  the  idea 
of  taking  the  place  of  the  foreign  skilled  workman  as  the  latter 
dropped  out. 

When  this  company  first  began  operation  in  its  factories  in 
other  sections  of  the  United  States,  the  English  method  of  glass- 
making  was  adopted.  In  1885  a  change  was  made  to  the  Belgian 
method.  In  both  instances  skilled  workers  were  imported  from 
England  first  and  afterwards  from  Belgium  and  from  sections  of 
Germany  where  the  Belgian  methods  were  used.  There  were  no 
skilled  American  workmen  to  be  secured,  as  the  plate-glass  industry 
was  new  in  America.  The  importation  of  foreign  workmen  was 
thus  indispensable  in  establishing  the  plate-glass  industry  in  this 
country.  The  skilled  workmen  among  the  Americans  and  recent 
immigrant  races  have  learned  their  trade  under  Belgian  tutoring. 

After  1895,  however,  most  of  the  American  employees,  except 
those  who  had  become  skilled  workmen  or  who  held  responsible 
positions  of  an  executive  nature,  were  drawn  away  from  the  glass 
industry  into  the  steel  plants  in  and  about  Pittsburgh  by  reason  of 
the  higher  wages,  and  it  was  necessary  for  the  company  to  look 
elsewhere  for  ordinary  labor,  as  well  as  for  material  out  of  which 
to  develop  future  skilled  labor.  As  early  as  1888  a  few  Poles, 
Russians,  and  Slovaks  were  secured,  but  not  in  sufficient  numbers 
to  meet  the  demands  for  unskilled  labor  until  after  1890.  They 
gradually  took  the  place  of  American  workers  after  that  date,  and 
at  the  present  time  not  more  than  30  per  cent  of  the  entire  force 
of  the  plant  is  composed  of  Americans. 

With  the  change  to  machine  methods  in  making  plate  glass 
and  the  gradual  exodus  of  the  original  skilled  hand  workers  and 
of  unskilled  Americans  to  other  industries,  the  demand  for  labor 
was  met  by  a  supply  of  Slovaks,  Poles,  and  Russians.  In  1900 
the  superintendent  of  the  plant  realized  the  change  which  was 
taking  place  and  that  his  plant  faced  a  competition  with  the  tin 
and  steel  mills,  as  well  as  other  plate-glass  plants,  in  the  labor 
market.  The  supply  of  skilled  labor  was  being  reduced,  and  the 
material  out  of  which  future  skilled  workers  could  be  drawn  was 
being  lowered  by  the  racial  change  from  American  to  cheap 
foreign  labor. 


296  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

In  1902  the  total  number  of  employees  in  the  manufacturing 
department  of  the  plant  numbered  about  560,  consisting  of  16 
foremen,  290  skilled  workmen  (52  per  cent),  at  an  average  rate 
of  pay  of  20  cents  per  hour,  and  254  unskilled  workmen,  at  an 
average  rate  of  pay  of  13  cents  per  hour.  An  experiment  had 
been  made  to  raise  the  level  of  the  unskilled  labor  in  1900  by 
increasing  the  rate  of  pay  of  workers  in  the  construction  depart- 
ment from  1 2  £  cents  per  hour  to  15  cents;  but  in  1902,  out  of 
300  laborers  in  this  department,  there  were  fewer  than  25  Amer- 
icans even  at  this  increased  rate  of  pay,  the  rest  of  them  being 
unskilled  Slovaks,  Poles,  and  Russians. 

The  plant  was  confronted,  therefore,  with  (i)  a  lessening  num- 
ber of  skilled  glassworkers  ;  (2)  an  increasing  number  of  unskilled 
Slovak,  Polish,  and  Russian  immigrants,  who  could  not,  the  com- 
pany believed,  be  advanced  into  skilled  occupations ;  and  (3)  an 
unsuccessful  competition  for  American  labor  with  the  various 
branches  of  the  steel  industry. 

It  soon  became  possible  to  substitute  machinery  for  some  of 
the  skilled  occupations,  such  as  laying,  grinding,  and  polishing, 
and  this  the  racial  changes  practically  demanded.  The  Belgians 
and  other  skilled  glassworkers  were  retained  in  those  positions 
requiring  skill  in  hand  work,  while  Americans  and  workmen  of 
other  races  who  possessed  enough  intelligence  were  put  in  charge 
of  the  machines.  Each  machine  displaced  several  skilled  hand 
workers,  but  the  increase  in  the  output  required  an  increase  of 
about  the  same  number  of  unskilled  workers  in  the  casting  rooms. 

Within  recent  years  not  only  Poles  and  Slovaks  have  come  to 
the  locality,  but  also  a  number  of  Macedonians,  together  with  a 
few  Italians.  Several  racial  movements  may  thus  be  distinguished 
in  the  history  of  the  plate-glass  plant,  which  can  be  grouped  as 
follows  : 

First,  the  use  of  skilled  glassworkers  imported  by  the  company 
from  England  to  plants  in  other  parts  of  the  United  States  and 
then  brought  to  the  new  plant  in  Community  A. 

Second,  the  change  from  the  English  methods  of  glassmaking 
to  the  Belgian  method  and  the  importation  of  Belgians  and 
Germans  to  the  various  older  plants  of  the  company  whence  they 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  297 

were  taken  to  serve  as  skilled  workers  in  the  new  plant.  At  this 
time  a  system  of  apprenticeship  was  also  inaugurated  in  the  hope 
that  native  Americans  would  learn  glassmaking. 

Third,  the  drawing  away  of  native  unskilled  workmen  into 
the  steel  mills  and  of  skilled  Belgians  and  English  into  new 
independent  glass  plants. 

Fourth,  the  coming  of  Slovaks,  Poles,  Russians,  and  Macedo- 
nians into  the  unskilled  occupations. 

Fifth,  the  advancement  of  a  few  natives,  nearly  all  of  the 
second-generation  Belgians,  Germans,  and  English  glassmakers, 
and  of  a  small  number  of  Slovaks  and  Poles  into  the  skilled 
occupations. 

EFFECT  OF  THE  EMPLOYMENT  OF  RECENT  IMMIGRANTS 
UPON  LABOR  ORGANIZATIONS 

The  extensive  employment  of  southern  and  eastern  European 
immigrants  in  manufacturing  and  mining  has  in  many  places 
resulted  in  the  weakening  of  labor  organizations  or  in  their  com- 
plete disruption.  This  condition  has  been  due  to  the  character  of 
the  recent  immigrant  labor  supply  and  to  the  fact  that  such  large 
numbers  of  recent  immigrants  found  employment  in  American 
industry  within  a  short  period  of  time.  On  account  of  their  lack 
of  industrial  training  and  experience  before  reaching  this  country, 
their  low  standards  of  living  as  compared  with  native  American 
wage-earners,  their  necessitous  condition  on  finding  employment 
in  this  country,  and  their  tractability,  the  southern  and  eastern 
Europeans,  as  already  noted,  have  been  willing  to  accept  the 
rates  of  compensation  and  the  working  conditions  as  they  have 
found  them  in  the  United  States.  The  tendency  of  recent  immi- 
grants to  thrift  and  their  desire  for  immediate  gains  have  made 
them  reluctant  to  enter  into  labor  disputes  involving  loss  of  time, 
or  to  join  labor  organizations  to  which  it  was  necessary  to  pay 
regular  dues.  As  a  consequence,  the  recent  immigrant  has  not,  as  a 
rule,  affiliated  himself  with  labor  unions  unless  compelled  to  do  so 
as  a  preliminary  step  toward  acquiring  work,  and  after  becoming 
a  member  of  a  labor  union  he  has  manifested  but  little  interest 


298  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

in  the  tenets  or  policy  of  the  organization.  Where  he  has  united 
with  the  labor  organizations  he  has  usually  refused  to  maintain  his 
membership  for  any  extended  period  of  time,  thus  rendering  diffi- 
cult the  unionizing  of  the  occupation  or  industry  in  which  he  has 
been  engaged.  Furthermore,  the  fact  that  the  recent  immigrants 
are  usually  of  non-English-speaking  races  has  made  their  absorp- 
tion by  the  labor  organizations  of  the  native  Americans  and  older 
immigrants  very  slow  and  expensive.  The  high  degree  of  illiter- 
acy among  recent  arrivals  has  also  added  to  the  difficulties  of  the 
situation  from  the  standpoint  of  the  labor  unions,  and  in  many 
cases  the  conscious  policy  of  the  employers  of  mixing  the  races 
in  certain  departments  and  divisions,  the  diversity  of  tongues, 
and  racial  prejudice,  preventing  concert  of  action  on  the  part  of 
the  employees,  have  rendered  the  stable  unionization  of  the 
recent  immigrants  almost  impossible 

The  attitude  of  the  labor  unions  toward  the  southern  and  eastern 
Europeans  has  been  receptive,  aggressive,  and  at  times  coercive. 
Not  only  have  they  been  willing  to  receive  the  immigrant  into 
the  organizations,  but  they  have  entered  into  expensive  and  ex- 
tended agitation  and  organizing  in  order  to  secure  the  support 
of  the  southern  and  eastern  European  wage-earner.  On  the 
other  hand,  when  the  newer  immigrants  have  entered  the  union 
the  native  American  and  older  immigrant  members  have,  as  a 
result  of  the  personal  and  industrial  characteristics  of  the  recent 
immigrants,  often  adopted  a  coercive  attitude  toward  them  until 
they  have  become  able  to  take  an  active  and  independent  part  in 
the  affairs  of  the  organization. 

A  significant  result  of  the  whole  situation,  however,  has  been 
that  the  influx  of  the  southern  and  eastern  Europeans  has  been  too 
rapid  to  permit  of  their  complete  absorption  by  the  labor  organ- 
izations which  were  in  existence  before  the  arrival  of  the  recent 
immigrant  wage-earners.  In  some  industries  the  influence  and 
power  of  the  labor  unions  are  concerned  only  with  those  occupa- 
tions in  which  the  competition  of  the  southern  and  eastern 
European  has  been  but  indirectly  or  remotely  felt,  and  conse- 
quently the  labor  organizations  have  not  been  seriously  affected. 
In  the  occupations  and  industries  in  which  the  pressure  of  the 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  299 

competition  of  the  immigrant  wage-earner  has  been  directly  felt, 
either  because  the  nature  of  the  work  was  such  as  to  permit  the 
immediate  employment  of  the  immigrant  or  because  through  the 
invention  of  improved  machinery  his  employment  was  made 
possible  in  occupations  which  formerly  required  training  and 
apprenticeship,  the  labor  organizations  have  been  completely 
overwhelmed  and  disrupted.  In  other  industries  and  occupations 
in  which  the  elements  of  skill,  training,  or  experience  were  requi- 
site, such  as  in  certain  divisions  of  the  glass-manufacturing  indus- 
try, the  effect  upon  labor  organizations  of  the  employment  of  the 
recent  immigrant  has  not  been  followed  with  such  results. 

The  displacement  of  older  employees  and  the  effect  of  the 
competition  of  recent  immigrant  industrial  workers  upon  labor 
unions  may  be  seen  in  greater  detail  by  a  consideration  of  the 
results  which  have  manifested  themselves  in  a  number  of  repre- 
sentative industries  since  the  competition  of  the  wage-earner  from 
southern  and  eastern  Europe  began.  One  of  the  best  illustra- 
tions in  this  connection  is  afforded  by  the  conditions  which  have 
been  developed  in  the  bituminous  mining  industry. 

Labor  Unions  in  the  Bituminous  Coal-Alining  Industry 

It  will  be  recalled  that  the  southern  and  eastern  European 
races,  so  far  as  the  bituminous  coal-mining  industry  is  concerned, 
were  originally  employed  in  the  Pennsylvania  mines,  and  conse- 
quently the  competition  of  the  races  of  recent  immigration  was 
first  felt  in  the  coal  fields  of  that  State.  As  the  influx  of  the 
different  races  became  greater  and  greater  its  significance  was 
brought  home  to  the  pioneer  mine  workers  by  the  realization 
that,  if  they  wished  to  perpetuate  the  existing  standards  of  work- 
manship and  the  working  conditions  to  which  they  were  accus- 
tomed, and  if  they  were  to  hope  for  better  conditions  and  higher 
wages  in  the  future,  they  must  control  the  incoming  thousands 
and  educate  them  as  to  what  they  considered  proper  conditions 
of  employment,  standards  of  living,  and  rates  of  compensation. 
Labor  organizations  were  formed  among  the  Pennsylvania  mine 
workers  in  the  early  seventies,  but  considerable  friction  occurred 


300  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

between  rival  organizations  until  1890,  when  all  organizations 
united  under  the  control  of  the  United  Mine  Workers  of 
America. 

The  problem  confronting  the  labor  unions  at  the  outset  was 
difficult,  and  it  steadily  grew  harder  and  more  exacting.  The 
new  workers  in  the  field  were  without  previous  experience  in 
mining  and  without  knowledge  as  to  what  wages,  hours,  or  con- 
ditions of  work  they  should  seek.  Most  of  the  incoming 
foreigners  were  without  resources  and  under  the  necessity  of 
obtaining  work  immediately  on  the  best  terms  that  could  be 
secured.  Very  few  could  speak  the  English  language,  and  agita- 
tion among  them  had  to  be  conducted  through  interpreters. 
Under  normal  conditions  of  industrial  peace  it  was  very  difficult 
to  make  the  recent  immigrant  see  the  necessity,  from  the  union 
standpoint,  of  contributing  regularly  to  the  union,  and  conse- 
quently strike  funds  could  not  be  accumulated.  A  significant 
outcome  of  each  strike  was  the  fact  that  a  greater  or  less  num- 
ber of  natives,  English,  Irish,  Scotch,  and  Germans  became 
dissatisfied  with  the  result  and  left  Pennsylvania  in  search  of 
better  working  conditions  in  the  Middle  West  or  the  localities  in 
the  Southwest  or  West  to  which  the  recent  immigrants  had  not 
penetrated  in  important  numbers.  These  employees  were,  as  a 
rule,  the  most  ambitious  and  aggressive  in  the  field  and  often 
were  leaders  in  the  labor  organizations.  For  this  reason  the 
conclusion  of  each  strike  found  the  unions  in  a  weaker  condition 
than  when  it  occurred,  and  the  succession  of  dissensions  and 
controversies  marked  an  advancing  state  of  demoralization  and 
dissolution. 

The  above-described  characteristics  of  the  incoming  immigrants, 
together  with  the  constantly  increasing  number  of  arrivals, 
rendered  it  impossible  for  the  labor  organizations  to  assimilate 
and  control  the  newcomers,  and  finally  the  old  employees  were 
forced  to  give  up  the  effort  and  practically  retire  from  the  Penn- 
sylvania field.  As  typical  of  the  inundation  and  disruption  of 
the  unions  by  the  influx  of  recent  immigrant  employees,  the 
case  of  the  territory  surrounding  Greensburg,  Connellsville,  Scott- 
dale,  Uniontown,  and  Latrobe,  which  is  popularly  and  scientifically 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  301 

known  as  the  Connellsville  coke  region,  may  be  cited.  Slovaks, 
Magyars,  Poles,  and  Italians,  as  the  result  of  the  expansion  in 
mining  operations,  were  employed  in  this  area  as  early  as  the 
year  1882,  and  from  that  time  forward,  as  the  coal  industry  devel- 
oped, other  races  of  southern  and  eastern  Europe  entered  the 
territory  in  large  numbers.  In  1882  the  Americans,  English,  and 
Irish  were  in  control  of  the  labor  organizations  in  the  district. 
-At  that  time  the  number  of  recent  immigrants  employed  was 
small,  and  the  unions  were  able  to  maintain  their  standing. 
Following  a  strike  in  1884,  however,  some  of  the  older  employees 
were  discharged  and  others  voluntarily  left  the  field.  The  result 
of  a  strike  in  1886  was  a  defeat  for  the  Amalgamated  Association 
of  Mining  Employees,  which  at  that  time  controlled  the  labor 
movements.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  strike  left  the  association 
so  weak  and  disorganized  that  the  next  year  it  was  taken  over  by 
the  Knights  of  Labor.  It  had  been  well  organized  among  the 
recent  immigrants,  but  the  results  of  the  strike  so  discouraged  them 
that,  instead  of  vigorously  attempting  to  build  up  the  organization, 
they  dropped  their  membership.  In  1890  the  United  Mine 
Workers  of  America  entered  the  field  and  absorbed  the  Knights 
of  Labor  and  other  organizations  of  the  mines.  The  next  year 
the  local  organizations  in  the  Connellsville  regions  entered  upon 
another  general  strike  without  the  consent  of  the  general  council 
of  the  United  Mine  Workers  and  were  defeated.  The  recent 
immigrants,  as  in  the  case  of  the  two  preceding  strikes,  shared  in 
this  strike  and  participated  in  much  rioting.  After  the  loss  of 
the  strike,  however,  they,  as  usual,  dropped  their  membership  in 
the  unions.  Many  of  the  older  immigrants  and  native  mine 
workers  had,  as  already  pointed  out,  left  the  industry  or  the  coke 
region  after  the  strikes  of  1884  and  1886,  and  many  more  were 
forced  to  move  away  or  voluntarily  left  the  Connellsville  territory 
after  the  unsuccessful  strike  of  1891.  Their  departure,  together 
with  the  withdrawal  of  the  recent  immigrants,  completely  demor- 
alized the  labor  organizations.  Three  years  later,  when  a  general 
strike  was  called  by  the  United  Mine  Workers  of  America,  the 
old  local  unions  in  the  coke  region  were  revived  and  a  prolonged 
strike  inaugurated,  but  its  unsuccessful  conclusion  completely 


302  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

destroyed  the  labor  organizations  and  ended  the  existence  of  the 
labor  movement  in  the  field. 

This  experience  in  the  coke  region  was  representative  of  con- 
ditions everywhere  in  the  Pennsylvania  bituminous  mining  area. 
The  entire  period  from  1870  to  1894  was  marked  by  a  series  of 
labor  dissensions  and  strikes,  each  of  which  left  the  labor  organ- 
izations in  a  weaker  condition  than  did  its  predecessor,  for  the 
reason  that  the  older  employees,  who  were  the  leaders  in  the 
movement  for  higher  wages  and  better  working  conditions,  find- 
ing themselves  unable  to  control  the  conditions  imposed  by  the 
increasing  employment  of  recent  immigrants,  and  finally  realizing 
that  it  was  impossible  to  control  the  incoming  supply  of  immi- 
grant labor,  abandoned  the  Pennsylvania  mines  and  sought  simi- 
lar employment  in  other  bituminous  localities  where  the  pressure 
of  competition  of  recent  immigrants  was  not  so  strong,  or,  on 
the  other  hand,  found  work  along  different  lines. 

The  tables  in  this  report  show  that  the  average  earnings  of 
mine  workers  in  this  section  are  42  cents  per  day  less  than  the 
average  earnings  in  the  territory  of  the  Middle  West  and  South- 
west, to  which  the  older  mine  workers  migrated,  and  in  which 
they  have  been  able  to  maintain  their  organizations.  In  the  few 
localities  in  Pennsylvania  where  unions  still  exist  higher  rates  of 
wages  and  better  conditions  of  employment  prevail  than  in  the 
sections  where  they  have  been  driven  out. 

Practically  the  same  situation  with  the  same  results  was  ex- 
perienced in  the  mines  of  West  Virginia.  Recent  immigrants 
did  not  enter  the  mines  of  that  State  in  large  numbers,  as  has 
already  been  seen,  until  after  the  year  1890.  The  competition 
was  soon  felt,  however,  and  the  significance  of  their  presence 
revealed  by  the  strikes  which  occurred  in  the  Fairmont,  Elk 
Garden,  and  other  fields  in  the  years  1894  and  1895.  Natives 
and  older  immigrant  employees  left  the  mines,  as  they  had  done 
in  Pennsylvania,  thus  creating  vacancies  which  were  filled  by  the 
employment  of  additional  numbers  of  recent  immigrants,  who  re- 
duced the  strength  of  the  labor  organizations.  The  rapid  expan- 
sion of  the  mining  operations  after  1894  also  brought  into  the 
mining  fields  a  constantly  growing  number  of  southern  and  eastern 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  303 

Europeans  who  completely  inundated  the  older  employees  and 
unconsciously  but  effectually  demoralized  the  labor  unions  and 
put  a  stop  to  any  efforts  toward  organization. 

After  this  effort  in  the  Pennsylvania  and  West  Virginia  fields 
the  older  employees  who  had  not  entered  other  industries  and  oc- 
cupations or  advanced  to  the  more  skilled  and  responsible  posi- 
tions in  the  mines  moved  westward  in  search  of  better  working 
conditions.  The  sons  of  Americans  and  races  of  older  immigra- 
tion had  already  ceased  entering  the  industry  and,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  the  residuum  of  the  inert  and  thriftless  representatives  of 
natives  and  older  immigrants  and  the  relatively  small  number  of 
natives,  Irish,  English,  Scotch,  and  Welsh  engaged  in  the  skilled 
and  supervisory  positions,  the  immigrants  from  southern  and 
eastern  Europe  were  left  in  undisputed  control  of  the  situation. 

Natives,  together  with  immigrants  from  Great  Britain  and 
Germany,  it  will  be  recalled,  were  almost  exclusively  employed 
in  the  mines  of  the  Middle  West  prior  to  1890.  During  the 
period  1890-1900  the  additional  demand  for  labor  was  principally 
supplied  by  the  Americans,  Germans,  Irish,  Scotch,  and  Welsh 
who  migrated  from  Pennsylvania  and  West  Virginia.  A  consider- 
able number  of  North  Italians  and  Lithuanians,  as  well  as  some 
Croatians  and  South  Italians,  had  also  joined  the  movement  to 
the  Illinois,  Indiana,  and  Ohio  fields,  but  the  older  immigrants 
and  natives  were  still  in  the  ascendancy  and  constituted  in  1900 
more  than  75  per  cent  of  the  mine-operating  forces.  The  labor 
organizations  had  maintained  their  bargaining  power  unimpaired 
in  this  field.  The  immigrants  coming  here  were  almost  all  former 
mine  workers  who  were  in  full  sympathy  with  the  tenets  and  policy 
of  labor  organization,  and  they  constituted  an  addition  to  the  labor- 
union  cause  and  not  a  disintegrating  force,  as  had  been  the  case 
during  the  influx  of  recent  immigrants  into  Pennsylvania.  More- 
over, a  considerable  proportion  of  the  incoming  North  Italians 
and  Lithuanians  were  of  an  extended  period  of  residence  in  the 
United  States  and  had  been  educated  to  the  standards  and  ideas 
of  the  labor  organizations  in  the  Pennsylvania  anthracite  and  bitu- 
minous regions.  Those  of  the  newcomers  who  were  not  trade 
unionists  were  energetically  instructed  and  forced  to  comply  with 


304  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  regulations  of  the  organization  as  a  condition  of  working  in 
the  mines.  In  the  many  controversies  during  this  period  the 
mine  workers'  union  was  successful.  Working  conditions  were 
improved  and  increased  rates  of  pay  for  both  machine  and  pick 
mining  secured. 

During  the  past  ten  years,  however,  although  the  labor  unions 
have  largely  maintained  their  strength,  conditions  have  changed 
and  the  preservation  of  the  standards  of  the  organization  has  been 
a  matter  of  the  greatest  difficulty.  Mining  operations  have  under- 
gone a  great  expansion,  and  recourse  has  been  had  to  races  of 
recent  immigration  in  greater  and  greater  numbers,  principally 
South  Italians,  Croatians,  Poles,  and  Lithuanians,  some  of  whom 
have  come  from  other  localities  in  the  United  States  but  the 
greater  number  direct  from  Europe.  These  newcomers  have  en- 
tered the  labor  organizations  principally  because  they  have  con- 
sidered it  a  necessary  step  preliminary  to  securing  work  in  the 
mines,  and  not  because  they  have  had  any  sympathy  or  interest 
in  the  labor-union  program.  They  have  also  manifested  compar- 
atively little  activity  in  its  behalf.  The  result  has  been  strongly 
apparent  in  dissatisfaction  among  the  former  mine  workers,  who 
have  considered  the  recent  immigrant  indifferent  to  the  working 
and  sanitary  conditions  in  the  mines.  As  the  pressure  resulting 
from  the  increase  in  numbers  of  the  recent  immigrants  has  be- 
come stronger,  the  tendency  has  been  for  the  older  immigrants 
and  natives  who  had  not  secured  more  skilled  or  responsible  po- 
sitions to  move  from  localities  and  mines  where  the  competition 
of  the  southern  and  eastern  European  has  been  most  strongly 
felt  to  other  localities  in  the  Middle  West  or  Southwest  or  to 
abandon  the  coal-mining  business  entirely  for  the  purpose  of  en- 
gaging in  other  work.  The  children  of  natives,  as  well  as  those 
of  the  Scotch,  Irish,  English,  Welsh,  and  Germans,  have  also 
entered  the  mines  in  decreasing  numbers,  and  there  has  been 
a  constantly  growing  tendency  toward  the  ascendancy  of  the 
southern  and  eastern  Europeans.  At  the  same  time  the  effort 
has  been  made  by  the  labor  organizations  to  train  the  southern 
and  eastern  Europeans  to  their  standards  and  methods.  In  the 
case  of  the  North  Italians  and  Lithuanians  the  attempt  has  been 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  305 

successful,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  a  compliance,  either  forced 
or  voluntary,  has  been  secured  from  mining  employees  of  other 
races.  Moreover,  the  dissatisfaction  with  the  recent  immigrant 
and  the  pressure  of  his  competition  has  not  only  been  strongly 
reflected  in  the  exodus  of  old  employees  but  in  the  gradual  sep- 
aration of  the  operating  forces  of  the  mines  into  two  distinct 
groups  —  ( i )  the  natives  and  older  immigrants  who  have  entered 
the  company  or  day  occupations  and  those  demanding  skill  and 
responsibility,  and  (2)  the  members  of  races  of  recent  immigration 
who  are  almost  exclusively  employed  as  loaders,  pick  miners,  and 
laborers.  The  Middle  West,  however,  as  compared  with  Penn- 
sylvania, has  had  an  advantage  in  meeting  the  problems  brought 
about  by  recent  immigration,  because  the  influx  has  been  smaller, 
the  time  covered  as  compared  with  the  number  of  arrivals  has 
been  longer,  elements  of  strength  up  to  1900  were  received  in 
the  form  of  large  additions  to  the  mine-working  forces  of  persons 
of  the  same  type  as  those  at  first  employed,  and  considerable 
numbers  of  the  southern  and  eastern  Europeans  who  have  entered 
the  territory  have  been  trained  miners  or  strong  unionists.  The 
greatest  demoralization  of  the  labor-union  movement  has  occurred 
during  the  past  ten  years  by  the  arrival  in  large  numbers  of  in- 
experienced immigrants  direct  from  the  south  and  east  of  Europe. 
At  the  time  when  the  older  employees  in  large  numbers 
migrated  from  Pennsylvania  to  the  Middle  West,  others  went  to 
the  mines  of  the  Southwest.  Miners  from  Great  Britain  and 
Germany  had  already  entered  Oklahoma  (then  Indian  Territory) 
mines  as  early  as  1880,  and  after  their  numbers  had  been 
increased  by  the  displaced  trades-unionists  of  Pennsylvania  and 
West  Virginia,  labor  organizations  were  formed  and  demand 
made  for  concessions  from  the  operators.  A  long  and  bitter  strike 
resulted  in  the  early  nineties,  the  settlement  of  which  in  many 
particulars  was  unfavorable  to  the  labor  leaders  and  the  unions. 
As  a  consequence  many  of  the  English,  Irish,  Scotch,  Welsh, 
and  Germans  left  the  mines  of  Oklahoma  (then  Indian  Territory) 
and  sought  work  in  the  Kansas  coal  fields.  Since  that  time  the 
coal  mines  of  Kansas  have  been  the  stronghold  of  unionism  in 
the  Southwest  and  the  greatest  point  of  concentration  for  the 


306  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

mine  workers  from  Great  Britain  and  northern  Europe.  The 
effects  of  the  increasing  numbers  of  recent  immigrants  in  Kansas 
and  Oklahoma,  however,  during  the  past  few  years  have  begun 
to  be  strongly  apparent.  Segregation  of  the  representatives  of 
the  old  and  the  new  immigration  according  to  occupations  has, 
as  in  the  Middle  West,  been  adopted  in  the  southwestern  fields. 
A  slow  but  steady  displacement  has  also  been  noticeable  through- 
out the  whole  territory  and  is  constantly  brought  to  the  attention 
by  the  departure  of  Americans  and  individual  members  of  the 
English,  Irish,  Scotch,  and  Welsh  races  for  the  coal  fields  of 
New  Mexico  and  for  the  coal  and  metal  mines  of  Colorado.  The 
native  Americans  and  the  children  of  the  older  immigrants  have 
not  been  entering  the  Kansas  and  Oklahoma  mines. 

From  the  standpoint  of  the  natives  and  the  older  immigrant 
employees,  it  therefore  seems  clearly  apparent  that  the  competi- 
tion of  recent  immigrants  has  caused  a  gradual  displacement, 
commencing  in  Pennsylvania  and  extending  westward,  until  at 
the  present  time  the  representatives  of  the  pioneer  employees  in 
the  bituminous  mining  industry  are  making  their  last  stand  in  the 
Southwest,  and  especially  in  Kansas,  where  they  are  gradually 
being  weakened  and  are  withdrawing  to  the  newly  opened  fields 
of  the  West,  to  which  the  recent  immigrant  has  not  come  in 
important  numbers.  Along  with  this  displacement  of  the  older 
employees  in  the  different  coal-producing  areas  has  proceeded  the 
elimination  of  a  correspondingly  large  proportion  from  the  indus- 
try and  the  development  of  such  working  and  living  conditions 
that  the  sons  of  natives  and  the  second  generation  of  immigrant 
races  have  only  to  a  very  small  extent  consented  to  enter  the 
industry.  On  the  other  hand,  as  regards  the  pioneer  employees 
and  their  descendants  who  have  remained  within  the  industry, 
two  facts  are  noteworthy :  ( i )  a  small  part,  consisting  of  the 
inert,  unambitious,  thriftless  element,  have  remained  on  the  lower 
level  of  the  scale  of  occupations  where  they  are  in  open  competi- 
tion with  the  majority  of  the  races  of  recent  immigration,  in  com- 
parison with  whom  they  are  generally  considered  less  efficient; 
and  (2)  the  larger  proportion  of  those  remaining,  including  the 
most  efficient  and  progressive  element,  have,  as  a  result  of  the 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  307 

expansion  of  the  industry,  secured  advancement  to  the  more 
skilled  and  responsible  positions  or,  as  in  the  Middle  West  and 
Southwest,  have  largely  entered  the  day  or  regularly  paid  occu- 
pations where  they  have  little,  if  any,  contact  with  recent  immi- 
grant employees.  In  the  Pennsylvania  mines,  where  the  sharpest 
and  longest  competition  has  been  felt,  the  displacements  have 
been  more  extensive  than  in  other  coal-mining  districts.  The 
employees  of  native  and  older  immigrant  stock  are  either  at  the 
top  or  at  the  bottom  of  the  industrial  scale,  and  recent  immi- 
grant mine  workers  have  been  employed  in  all  occupations  except 
the  more  skilled  and  responsible. 

Another  illustration  of  the  effects  of  recent  immigration  upon 
the  labor  unions  of  industrial  workers,  which  revolves  primarily 
around  the  question  of  improved  mechanical  appliances,  is  fur- 
nished by  the  cotton-goods  manufacturing  industry.  The  discus- 
sion of  conditions  which  have  developed  in  that  industry  follows. 

Labor  Organizations  in  the  Cotton-Goods  Manufacturing  Industry 

In  the  cotton-goods  manufacturing  industry  the  fact  that  the 
American  and  older  immigrant  employees  from  Great  Britain 
have  entered  the  skilled  occupations,  as  weaving  and  tending  the 
slashers,  and  have  been  able  to  secure  control  of  the  immigrant 
employees  before  these  were  advanced  to  the  skilled  occupations, 
has  prevented  the  complete  disruption  of  labor  organization  in 
the  industry.  At  present  it  is  only  in  Fall  River,  Massachusetts, 
that  the  unions  of  the  employees  have  any  recognized  standing, 
although  the  wage  agreements  made  in  Fall  River  dominate  the 
rates  of  pay  in  the  whole  industry  in  the  North  Atlantic  States. 
In  Fall  River  five  occupations  are  unionized  —  the  weavers, 
carders,  mule  spinners,  slasher  tenders,  and  loom  fixers.  Only 
about  9000  of  the  total  30,000  operatives  in  that  city  belong  to 
the  labor  organizations,  but  as  the  rates  of  pay  in  all  occupations 
are  adjusted  to  the  rates  received  by  the  weavers,  the  unions 
have  practically  the  unanimous  support  of  the  operatives.  The 
strong  unionist  tendencies  in  Fall  River  are  traceable  to  the 
influences  of  the  early  English  immigrants,  who  formed  the  first 


308  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

organizations  and  who  educated  later  comers  to  the  tenets  of 
unionism.  The  Irish  have  always  been  strong  supporters  of  the 
labor  organizations,  and  the  French-Canadians  were  trained  to 
be  so  shortly  after  they  entered  the  industry.  The  more  recent 
immigrant  employees  from  southern  and  eastern  Europe  and 
Asia,  however,  have  been  a  constant  menace  to  the  labor  organ- 
izations, and  have  been  directly  and  indirectly  instrumental  in 
weakening  the  unions  and  threatening  their  disruption.  The 
divergencies  in  language  and  the  high  degree  of  illiteracy  and 
ignorance  among  the  recent  immigrant  operatives  have  made  the 
work  of  organization  among  them  very  difficult  and  expensive. 
The  greatest  difficulty  against  which  the  labor  leaders  have  had 
to  contend,  however,  has  been  the  low  living  and  working  stand- 
ards of  the  southern  and  eastern  Europeans  and  their  willingness 
to  accept  conditions  of  employment  which  the  older  employees 
consider  unsatisfactory.  The  recent  immigrants  have  also  been 
reluctant  to  identify  themselves  with  the  unions  and  to  pay  the 
regular  dues  under  normal  conditions,  thus  preventing  the  labor 
organizations  from  accumulating  large  resources  for  use  in 
strengthening  their  general  conditions  and  in  maintaining  their 
position  in  time  of  strikes.  Although  the  recent  immigrants  have 
not  been  used  as  strike  breakers,  they  have  taken  advantage  of 
labor  difficulties  and  strikes  to  secure  a  foothold  in  the  industry, 
and  especially  in  the  more  skilled  occupations.  This  was  espe- 
cially noticeable  during  the  textile  strike  of  1903.  Toward  the 
conclusion  of  this  strike  —  when  the  controversy  had  practically 
been  gained  by  the  mills,  a  large  proportion  of  the  operatives  had 
resumed  work,  and  the  unions  were  hesitating  relative  to  order- 
ing a  return  to  work  —  the  southern  and  eastern  Europeans 
entered  the  mills  ;  and  when  the  older  employees  finally  applied 
for  work  they  found  recent  immigrants  occupying  a  large  pro- 
portion of  the  skilled  positions  which,  before  the  strike,  had  been 
exclusively  held  by  the  English,  Irish,  and  French-Canadians. 
The  mill  corporations,  with  keen  foresight,  had  realized  that  by 
placing  the  recent  immigrants  in  these  positions  they  would 
break  the  strength  of  unionism  for  at  least  a  generation,  and  the 
southern  and  eastern  Europeans  had  been  quick  to  see  that 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  309 

the  strike  offered  them  an  opportunity  for  an  advancement  in 
the  industry  which,  in  the  regular  order  of  affairs,  would  require 
a  considerable  period  of  years. 

The  pressure  of  the  recent  immigrant  labor  supply  and  its 
eagerness  to  advance  in  earning  capacity  made  it  possible  for  the 
employers  to  carry  out  their  policy  of  undermining  the  unions' 
elements  of  strength  and  control  in  the  industry.  Since  1903, 
outside  of  Fall  River,  the  labor  organizations  are  without  recog- 
nition and  practically  demoralized.  Moreover,  the  advancement  in 
large  numbers  of  the  southern  and  eastern  Europeans  to  weaving, 
spinning,  beaming,  and  similar  occupations  has  tended  to  bring 
them  into  more  direct  competition  with  the  Americans  and  older 
immigrant  employees  and  to  destroy  the  advantage  which  the  latter 
class,  who  control  and  direct  the  unions,  formerly  possessed. 

EFFECT  OF  THE  EMPLOYMENT  OF  RECENT  IMMIGRANTS  UPON 
INDUSTRIAL  ORGANIZATION  AND  METHODS 

The  only  effect  observable  upon  the  organization  of  the  operat- 
ing forces  of  mines  and  manufacturing  plants  as  the  result  of  the 
extensive  employment  of  recent  immigrants  has  been  the  increase 
in  the  number  of  subordinate  foremen  in  a  great  many  industries. 
This  situation  might  naturally  be  expected  because  of  the  fact 
that  the  wage-earners  from  southern  and  eastern  Europe  and  Asia 
are  of  non-English-speaking  races  and  require  a  greater  amount 
of  supervision  and  direction  than  the  native  Americans  and  the 
older  immigrants  from  Great  Britain.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  in 
most  instances  the  subordinate  foremen  referred  to  are  usually 
little  more  than  interpreters.  The  body  of  non-English-speaking 
employees  is  subdivided  into  smaller  groups,  which  are  placed 
under  their  direction  in  order  to  insure  more  ease  in  handling 
and  a  greater  degree  of  efficiency. 

From  what  has  already  been  said  relative  to  the  lack  of  any 
industrial  experience  of  the  larger  proportion  of  recent  immigrant 
industrial  workers  it  is  clear  that  their  employment  has  increased 
the  liability  to  accidents  and  disease  in  mines  and  industrial 
establishments.  This  situation  is  due  to  ignorance  upon  the  part 


310  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  recent  immigrant  wage-earners  and  their  consequent  willingness 
to  accept  dangerous  working  conditions  and  not  to  insist  upon 
safety  devices  and  proper  methods  of  protection.  In  certain 
industries  their  ignorance  also  leads  them  to  neglect  the  sanitary 
rules  which  have  been  formulated  for  the  protection  of  themselves 
and  their  fellow  workmen. 

In  a  large  number  of  cases  the  lack  of  training  and  experience 
of  the  southern  and  eastern  European  affects  only  his  own  safety. 
On  the  other  hand,  his  ignorant  acquiescence  in  dangerous  or 
insanitary  working  conditions  may  make  the  continuance  of  such 
conditions  possible  and,  as  a  result,  he  may  become  a  menace  to 
a  part  or  to  the  whole  of  an  operating  force  of  an  industrial  estab- 
lishment. This  fact  in  some  industries  largely  accounts  for  the 
withdrawal  of  native  Americans  and  the  older  immigrant  em- 
ployees from  certain  occupations  in  which  the  recent  immigrant 
has  become  predominant.  In  the  mining  occupations  the  presence 
of  an  untrained  employee  may  constitute  an  element  of  danger  to 
the  entire  body  of  workmen.  There  seems  to  be  a  direct  causal 
relation  between  the  extensive  employment  of  recent  immigrants 
in  American  mines  and  the  extraordinary  increase  within  recent 
years  in  the  number  of  mining  accidents.  This  tendency  may  be 
illustrated  by  the  character  of  recent  immigration  to  the  bitu- 
minous coal  mines  and  in  the  increase  in  accidents,  of  both  a  fatal 
and  a  nonfatal  character.  It  is  an  undisputed  fact  that  the  greater 
number  of  accidents  in  bituminous  mines  arises  from  two  sets  of 
causes :  (i)  the  recklessness,  and  (2)  the  ignorance  and  inex- 
perience, of  employees.  When  the  lack  of  training  of  the  recent 
immigrant  while  abroad  is  considered  in  connection  with  the  fact 
that  he  becomes  an  employee  in  the  mines  immediately  on  his 
arrival  in  this  country,  and  when  it  is  recalled  that  a  large  pro- 
portion of  the  new  arrivals  are  not  only  illiterate  and  unable  to 
read  any  precautionary  notices  posted  in  the  mines,  but  also 
unable  to  speak  English  and  consequently  without  ability  to  com- 
prehend instructions  intelligently,  the  inference  is  plain  that  a 
direct  causal  relation  exists  between  the  employment  of  recent 
immigrants  and  the  increase  in  the  number  of  fatalities  and  acci- 
dents in  the  mines.  No  complete  statistics  have  been  compiled 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  311 

as  to  the  connection  between  accidents  and  races  at  work,  but 
the  figures  available  clearly  indicate  the  conclusion  that  there  has 
been  a  direct  connection  between  the  employment  of  untrained 
foreigners  and  the  prevalence  of  mining  casualties.1  The  mining 
inspectors  of  the  several  coal-producing  States,  the  United  States 
Geological  Survey,  and  the  older  employees  in  the  industry  also 
bear  testimony  in  this  respect  to  the  effect  of  the  employment  of 
the  southern  and  eastern  European.  The  opinion  of  the  Geolog- 
ical Survey  is  of  special  interest  and  may  be  briefly  quoted.2 

Another  important  factor  in  the  United  States  is  to  be  found  in  the  nation- 
ality of  the  miners.  Most  of  the  men  are  foreign-born,  a  large  proportion  of 
them  are  unable  to  understand  English  freely,  and  a  still  larger  number  are 
unable  to  read  or  write  that  language.  Some  of  them  are  inexperienced  and 
do  not  take  proper  precautions  either  for  their  own  safety  or  for  the  safety  of 
others.  This  becomes  a  most  serious  menace  unless  they  are  restrained  by 
carefully  enforced  regulations. 

Another  effect  upon  the  personnel  of  the  working  forces  result- 
ing from  recent  immigration  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  cheap  immi- 
grant male  labor  in  some  industries  has  been  substituted  for  native 
and  sometimes  foreign-born  female  labor.  This  condition  of 
affairs  has  largely  grown  out  of  state  legislation  prohibiting  night 
work  of  women  and  children,  and  the  willingness  of  the  southern 
and  eastern  European  to  accept  low  wages  has  made  it  possible 
to  employ  him  in  occupations  formerly  held  by  women  and  chil- 
dren. An  illustration  of  this  tendency  may  be  found  in  the  racial 
composition  of  the  cotton  mills  in  New  England  and  of  textile 
manufacturing  establishments  in  other  localities,  and  in  the  fact 
that  Greeks  are  employed  to  do  the  night  work  in  New  England 
mills  formerly  done  by  women  and  children. 

The  recent  immigrant,  by  his  low  standards  and  tractability, 
has  also  made  the  continuance  of  the  so-called  company  store  and 
house  system  possible  and  its  adoption  more  extensive  than  would 
otherwise  have  been  the  case  had  he  not  been  employed. 

1  See  Reports  of   the  Immigration  Commission,  "Immigrants  in  Industries: 
Bituminous  Coal  Mining"    (6ist  Cong.,  2d  Session,  Sen.  Doc.  No.  633,  Part  I). 

2  Bulletin  333  of  the  United  States  Geological  Survey,  entitled  "Coal  Mining 
Accidents  :  their  Causes  and  Prevention." 


312  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

EFFECT  OF  THE  EMPLOYMENT  OF  RECENT  IMMIGRANTS  UPON 
WORKING  RELATIONS 

As  has  already  been  pointed  out,  there  has  been  a  sharp  segre- 
gation of  the  native  and  older  immigrant  employees  into  distinct 
occupations  in  the  mines  and  manufacturing  establishments  grow- 
ing out  of  the  employment  of  southern  and  eastern  Europeans. 
This  segregation  also  obtains,  as  already  noted,  in  the  case  of 
living  and  business  relations.  The  general  attitude  of  the  native- 
born  industrial  workers  toward  the  recent  immigrant  is  one  of 
antipathy  and  superiority,  but  this  attitude  does  not  manifest  itself 
except  under  special  provocation.  Normally  the  recent  immigrant 
in  the  mines  and  manufacturing  establishments  is  treated  with 
indifference  by  the  classes  of  older  employees  who  are  not  directly 
associated  with  him.  Practically  the  only  cases  of  open  hostility 
on  the  part  of  the  native  Americans  and  older  immigrants  from 
Great  Britain  and  northern  Europe  toward  the  southern  and 
eastern  European,  met  with  during  the  course  of  the  general  in- 
dustrial study,  arose  from  the  unusual  pressure  of  competition  due 
to  the  curtailment  of  employment  during  the  industrial  depression 
of  1907-1908.  During  that  period  the  tendency  of  the  recent 
immigrant  to  concentrate  in  localities  where  employment  was 
available  and  to  accept  abnormal  working  conditions  often  led  to 
acts  of  hostility  or  coercion  upon  the  part  of  the  native  American 
and  older  immigrant  wage-earners. 

EFFECT  OF  THE  EMPLOYMENT  OF  RECENT  IMMIGRANTS  UPON 
WAGES  AND  HOURS  OF  WORK 

It  has  not  appeared  in  the  industries  covered  by  this  investi- 
gation of  manufactures  and  mining  that  it  is  usual  for  employers 
to  engage  immigrants  at  wages  actually  lower  than  those  prevail- 
ing at  the  time  in  the  industry  where  they  are  employed,  what- 
ever the  ultimate  tendency  of  the  large  immigration  may  be.  It 
is  hardly  open  to  doubt,  however,  that  the  availability  of  the  large 
supply  of  recent  immigrant  labor  prevented  the  increase  in  wages 
which  otherwise  would  have  resulted  during  recent  years  from  the 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  313 

increased  demand  for  labor.  The  low  standards  of  the  southern 
and  eastern  European,  his  ready  acceptance  of  a  low  wage  and 
existing  working  conditions,  his  lack  of  permanent  interest  in  the 
occupation  and  community  in  which  he  has  been  employed,  his 
attitude  toward  labor  organizations,  his  slow  progress  toward  assim- 
ilation, and  his  willingness  seemingly  to  accept  indefinitely  with- 
out protest  certain  wages  and  conditions  of  employment,  have 
rendered  it  extremely  difficult  for  the  older  classes  of  employees 
to  secure  improvements  in  conditions  or  advancement  in  wages 
since  the  arrival  in  considerable  numbers  of  southern  and  eastern 
European  wage-earners.  As  a  general  proposition,  it  may  be  said 
that  all  improvement  in  conditions  and  increases  in  rates  of  pay 
have  been  secured  in  spite  of  the  presence  of  the  recent  immi- 
grant. The  recent  immigrant,  in  other  words,  has  not  actively 
opposed  the  movements  toward  better  conditions  of  employment 
and  higher  wages,  but  his  availability  and  his  general  character- 
istics and  attitude  have  constituted  a  passive  opposition  which  has 
been  most  effective. 

EFFECT  OF  THE  EMPLOYMENT  OF  RECENT  IMMIGRANTS  UPON 
THE  ESTABLISHMENT  OF  NEW  INDUSTRIES 

The  extensive  employment  of  recent  immigrant  labor  has  not 
resulted  in  the  establishment  of  new  industries  of  any  importance. 
As  a  result  of  the  presence  of  southern  and  eastern  European 
immigrants  in  American  industrial  communities  small  and  unim- 
portant industries  have  been  established  to  supply  the  peculiar 
demands  of  the  immigrant  population  in  food  products  and  sim- 
ilar articles.  Very  few  of  the  recent  arrivals,  however,  had  any 
training  abroad  which  qualified  them  for  manufacturing  or  mining 
pursuits  of  any  description.  By  way  of  contrast,  it  will  be  recalled 
that  a  large  proportion  of  the  earlier  immigrant  laborers  were 
originally  induced  to  come  to  this  country  to  contribute  their  skill 
and  experience  toward  the  establishment  of  new  industries,  such 
as  mining  and  textile,  glass,  and  iron  and  steel  manufacturing, 
or  after  these  industries  had  been  developed  in  the  United  States, 
English,  Irish,  Scotch,  German,  and  Scandinavian  wage-earners 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

employed  in  similar  work  abroad  immigrated  to  this  country  in 
search  of  better  wages  and  working  conditions. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  presence  of  the  recent  immigrant 
wage-earner  and  his  household  has  had  a  pronounced  effect  upon 
the  distribution  of  certain  industries.  Cigar  and  tobacco  factories, 
silk  mills,  and  men's  and  women's  clothing  manufacturing  estab- 
lishments and  other  small  industries  have  been  located  in  iron 
and  steel,  anthracite  coal  mining,  and  other  localities,  developed 
in  connection  with  some  of  the  principal  industries  of  the  country. 
The  reason  for  this  policy  has  been  the  availability  of  cheap 
woman  and  child  labor  of  the  immigrant  households  the  heads 
of  which  were  employed  in  the  steel  mills  or  furnaces,  the  coal 
mines,  or  some  other  basic  industry.  One  of  the  best  illustrations 
of  this  tendency  is  seen  in  the  localization  of  the  silk  industry  in 
the  anthracite  coal-producing  area  of  Pennsylvania.  The  erection 
and  operation  of  large  cigar  and  tobacco  factories  in  localities  in 
which  the  primary  industry  consists  in  the  manufacture  of  iron 
and  steel  also  furnishes  another  example  of  the  same  tendency. 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS 


315 


25.  THE  ANNUAL  EARNINGS  OF  IMMIGRANT  FAMILIES 

PER  CENT  OF  FAMILIES   HAVING  A  TOTAL  YEARLY  INCOME 

OF  EACH   SPECIFIED  AMOUNT  (APPROXIMATE),  BY  GENERAL 

NATIVITY  AND  RACE  OF  HEAD  OF  FAMILY 

[This  table  includes  only  races  with  twenty  or  more  families  reporting.  The  totals,  however, 
are  for  all  races.   Twenty-two  families  are  included  which  report  income  as  "  none."] 


GENERAL  NATIVITY  AND  RACE  OF 
HEAD  OF  FAMILY 


NUMBER  OF 
FAMILIES 
INCLUDED 


AVERAGE 
FAMILY 
INCOME 


PER  CENT  OF  FAMILIES  HAVING 
A  TOTAL  INCOME 


Under 
£300 


Under 

$500 


Under 

$750 


Under 

$1000 


Under 

#1500 


Native-born  of  native  father  : 

White 1070 

Negro 124 

Native-born  of  foreign  father,  by  race 
of  father : 

Bohemian  and  Moravian  ....  24 

Canadian,  French    ......  27 

English 42 

German 213 

Irish 292 

Polish 77 

Foreign-bom  : 

Armenian tor 

Bohemian  and  Moravian  ....  437 

Brava 29 

Canadian,  French 477 

Croatian 560 

Cuban 43 

Dutch 129 

English 425 

Finnish 137 

Flemish 79 

French 130 

German 887 

Greek 49 

Hebrew 660 

Irish 675 

Italian,  North 583 

Italian,  South 1380 

Lithuanian 763 

Magyar 860 

Mexican 39 

Norwegian 26 

Polish 2038 

Portuguese 258 

Roumanian 69 

Russian 76 

Ruthenian 571 

Scotch 123 

Servian 59 

Slovak 1243 

Slovenian 163 

Spanish 37 

Swedish 460 

Syrian 142 

Welsh 90 

Grand  total '5,72f> 

Total  native-born  of  foreign  father  .     .  707 

Total  native-born 1,901 

Total  foreign-born 13,825 


621 

891 


926 
68 1 

73° 
773 
562 

9°3 
702 
88 1 
772 

956 

781 
798 

757 
878 
632 
685 
999 
657 
569 
636 
6n 
472 
1015 

595 
790 
805 
494 
569 
1142 


1099 
974 
594 
893 


2.2 

4.0 


3-7 
.o 
1.9 


8.9 
3-7 

1.9 
10.4 

2-3 
1.6 
1.9 

2.2 

7.6 

3-8 
2.4 
,6.3 
9.1 

2.1 
9.1 

16.6 
6.9 
12.9 

7-7 

.o 

10.5 

2-3 
10. 1 

6.6 

IO.O 

.o 

32.2 

6.1 


17.6 

6.7 


'3-5 

55-6 


33-3 
14.8 
23.8 
11.7 
.5.8 
29.9 

27-7 
22.4 
44-8 
10.9 
37-9 

4-7 
16.3 
n.8 

6.6 
'7-7 
26.9 
15.1 
51.0 
33-5 

12. 1 
36.4 
50.9 

33-2 

40.2 
69.2 

3-8 
44.0 
27.9 
29.0 
57-9 
43-3 

9.8 
66.1 
43-8 
37-4 

2.7 

6-3 
47-2 
17.8 


45.1 
88.7 


75.0 
51.9 
47.6 
46.0 
41.8 
64.9 

57-4 
60.2 
89.7 
44.2 
68.9 

23-3 
56.6 

37-9 
43-8 
50.6 
56.2 
44-9 
75-5 
69.4 

38.4 
70.8 
79-5 
73-9 
75-5 
92.3 
"•5 
79.0 
60.9 
62.3 

89-5 
82.1 

31-7 

86.4 
77-9 
72.4 
13-5 
34-8 
76.1 
45.6 


74.1 
69.0 
73-7 


96.6 


67.4 
79-8 
62.4 
90.5 
82.3 
80.0 
70.9 
81.6 


91.4 
90.8 
90.7 
97-4 
50.0 
91.4 
79-8 
76.8 
98.7 
94-4 
47.2 
93-2, 
92.0 
87.7 
37-8 
66.7 
88.0 
60.0 


93-6 
99.2 


92.9 
89-7 
89-7 


95.0 
94.1 

IOO.O 

91.0 
93-8 
97-7 
94.6 
88.9 
95.6 

93-7 
96.2 
91.5 

93-9 
97.0 
84.1 
96.7 
98.5 
97.6 


97.8 
90.7 

88.4 

IOO.O 

98.9 
77.2 
98.3 

98.9 
95.1 
91.9 

89.1 
97.2 

90.0 


7.6 


31-3 


64.0 


82.6 


866 
843 
704 


'•7 

2.2 


72.1 

74-1 
83.8 


91.5 
03-2 
95-2 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


OLD   AND    NEW   IMMIGRATION    COMPARED    WITH    RESPECT  TO 
AVERAGE  ANNUAL  FAMILY  INCOME  OF  THE  FOREIGN-BORN, 

BY  RACE 


OLD  IMMIGRATION 

AVERAGE 

FAMILY 
INCOME 

NEW  IMMIGRATION 

AVERAGE 

FAMILY 
INCOME 

Canadian,  French  .... 
Dutch     

$903 

772 

Armenian  
Croatian     

$73° 

7O2 

English  

CK6 

Hebrew     ...         ... 

685 

German  .                  ... 

878 

Italian,  North    .          ... 

6=7 

Irish  

nnq 

Italian,  South    

^60 

Norwegian      

lOlf, 

Lithuanian     

6-?6 

Scotch    

1  142 

Magyar      

611 

Swedish      

074 

Polish    

enc 

Welsh     

SQT, 

Portuguese    

7OO 

Ruthenian      

c6ci 

Slovak  

582 

Slovenian  
Syrian    

684 
:nj 

Upon  comparing  the  yearly  incomes  of  the  two  classes  of  im- 
migrants, it  is  seen  that  the  highest  average  shown  by  any  race 
of  recent  immigration  is  below  the  lowest  average  shown  by  any 
race  of  past  immigration. 

[The  preceding  table  is  from  the  United  States  Immigration  Commission, 
Summary  Report  on  Immigrants  in  Manufacturing  and  Mining  (6ist  Congress, 
2d  Session,  Sen.  Doc.  No.  633),  pp.  125-127.  A  total  of  17,141  households,  the 
heads  of  which  were  miners  or  wage-earners  in  manufacturing  establishments, 
were  studied  in  detail  in  the  course  of  the  general  investigation  of  immigrants  in 
industries  in  the  territory  between  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  the  Atlantic  sea- 
board. These  households  were  selected  upon  the  following  basis:  (i)  A  certain 
maximum  number  was  allotted  to  each  industry  studied;  (2)  the  number  of  the 
households  of  each  recent  immigrant  race  studied  in  connection  with  each 
industry  was  apportioned  according  to  the  relative  numerical  importance  of  the 
several  races  in  the  operating  force,  and  a  limited  number  of  households  the 
heads  of  which  were  native  Americans  or  older  immigrants  without  reference  to 
the  number  of  such  employees  in  the  industry  were  secured  for  the  purpose  of 
comparison  with  the  households  the  heads  of  which  were  wage-earners  of  recent 
immigration.) 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  317 

26.  OCCUPATIONS  OF  THE  FIRST  AND  SECOND  GENERA- 
TIONS OF  IMMIGRANTS 

The  differences  between  the  occupations  of  the  immigrants  and 
those  of  their  children  born  in  this  country  are  of  great  interest 
because  they  throw  light  both  upon  the  tendency  of  the  immigrant 
stock  to  rise  from  relatively  unskilled  and  poorly  paid  occupations 
to  higher  callings  and  upon  the  trend  of  the  competition  which 
the  immigrant  stock  is  exerting  upon  the  native-born  Americans 
of  native  parentage.  Some  of  the  nationalities  are  represented 
by  very  small  numbers  of  the  second  generation  born  in  this 
country.  This  is  especially  the  case  with  some  of  the  races  in 
the  newer  immigration  —  Austrians,  Hungarians,  Italians,  Poles, 
and  Russians.  In  some  of  the  older  immigrant  stocks,  like  the 
Irish  and  Germans,  on  the  contrary,  the  numbers  in  the  second 
generation  are  very  large. 

"  As  a  result  of  these  variations  in  the  relative  size  of  the  two 
generations  the  racial  composition  of  the  first  generation  of  foreign 
breadwinners  differs  in  a  marked  degree  from  that  of  the  second. 
Thus  of  the  first  generation  of  male  breadwinners  of  foreign 
origin,  26.1  per  cent  are  Germans  and  14.6  per  cent  are  Irish; 
while  in  the  second  generation  these  percentages  are  much  larger, 
the  percentage  of  Germans  being  36  and  that  of  Irish,  26.3.  The 
first  generation,  therefore,  is  40.7  per  cent  Irish  and  German,  the 
second  62.3  per  cent.  Accordingly  the  characteristics  of  the  Irish 
and  Germans  have  more  influence  upon  the  second  generation, 
taken  as  a  whole,  than  upon  the  first. 

"  On  the  other  hand,  the  Italians,  Poles,  and  Russians  con- 
stitute, respectively,  5.7,  3.7,  and  3.9  per  cent  of  the  first 
generation,  as  compared  with  0.4,  0.6,  and  0.4  per  cent  of  the 
second  generation.  In  the  aggregate  these  three  nationalities 
represent  13.3  per  cent  of  the  first  generation  and  only  1.4  per 
cent  of  the  second. 

"  Because  of  this  difference  in  the  racial  composition  of  the 
two  generations  it  becomes  difficult  to  determine  the  significance 
of  the  difference  between  the  two  generations  as  regards  the 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


occupations  which  they  follow  unless  the  comparison  is  made  for 
each  nationality  separately."1 

The  Immigration  Commission  made  the  comparison  by  races, 
but  as  such  a  detailed  comparison  involves  separate  tables  for 


MALES2 


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^ 

1  Abstract  of  the  Report  of  the  Immigration  Commission  on  Occupations  of 
the  First  and  Second  Generations  of  Immigrants,  pp.  8,  9. 

-  Breadwinners,  ten  years  of  age  and  over.  The  figures  are  percentages  of 
the  total  number  of  individuals  in  each  class.  Compiled  from  Abstract  of  Report 
on  Occupations  of  the  First  and  Second  Generations  of  Immigrants  in  the 
United  States,  1911. 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  319 

each  race,  all  that  it  is  possible  to  give  here  is  a  summary  for  the 
different  nativity  groups  and  for  the  more  important  occupation 
groups.  While  the  figures  here  given  are  of  no  value  in  tracing 
the  tendencies  in  any  given  race,  a  comparison  of  the  percentages 
in  each  occupation  in  the  "foreign-born"  and  "native  born  of 
foreign  parentage  "  groups  is  of  considerable  significance. 

27.  PROPOSITIONS    CONCERNING    THE    OCCUPATIONAL 
DISTRIBUTION  OF  THE  LABOR  SUPPLY1 


A.  One  large  factor  in  the  bad  distribution  of  wealth  is  the 
bad  distribution  of  men  among  the  different  occupations,  too  many 
crowding  into  the  unskilled  and  too  few  going  into  the  skilled 
and  the  learned  occupations. 

B.  Children  born  of  parents  who  have  not  been  able  to  rise 
out  of  the  poorly   paid   occupations   are   themselves   less   likely, 
on   the  average,   to  rise  out  of  these  occupations  than  are  the 
children  of  parents  who  have  risen  into  the  more  highly  skilled 
and  better  paid  occupations. 

C.  Therefore  it  would  help  matters  if  the  birth  rate  could  be 
reduced  among  those  who  remain  in  the  overcrowded,  underpaid, 
and  unskilled  occupations. 

II 

So  long  as  immigrants  enter  the  ranks,  particularly  the  lower 
ranks,  of  labor2  in  larger  proportions,  and  the  ranks  of  the  busi- 
ness and  professional  classes  in  smaller  proportions  than  the  native- 
born,  continuous  immigration  will  produce  the  following  results  : 

A.  As  to  Distribution.  It  will  keep  competition  more  intense 
among  laborers,  particularly  in  the  lower  ranks,  and  less  intense 
among  business  and  professional  men,  than  it  otherwise  would  be. 
This  will  tend  to  increase  the  incomes  of  the  employing  classes,  and 
to  depress  wages,  particularly  the  wages  of  the  lower  grades  of  labor. 

1  By  T.  N.  Carver.    From  Bulletin  of  the  American  Economic  Association, 
Aprrl,  1911,  pp.  204-206. 

2  Cf.  Commons,  Races  and  Immigrants  in  America.    Table  between  pages 
108  and  109. 


320  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

B.  As  to  Production.   It  will  give  a  relatively  low  marginal  pro- 
ductivity to  a  typical  immigrant,  particularly  in  the  lower  grades 
of  labor,  and  make  him  a  relatively  unimportant  factor  in  the  pro- 
duction of  wealth  —  a  few  more  or  a  few  less  will  make  relatively 
little  difference  in  the  total  production  of  national  wealth.1 

C.  As  to  Organization  of  Industry.    Because  of  their  low  indi- 
vidual productivity,   they  can  only  be  economically  employed  at 
low  wages  and  in  large  gangs?1 

D.  As  to  Agriculture.    If  immigrants  go  in  large  numbers  into 
agriculture,  it  will  lead  to  one  or  the  other  of  the  following  re- 
sults, in  all  probability  the  latter: 

1 .  The  continuous  morcellement  or  subdivision  of  farms,  result- 
ing in  an  inefficient  and  wasteful  application  of  labor,  and  smaller 
crops  per  man,  though  probably  larger  crops  per  acre  ;  or 

2.  The  development  of  a  class  of  landed  proprietors  on  the 
one  hand,  and  a  landless  agricultural  proletariat  on  the  other.3 

1  A  disproportionately  large  supply  of  one  grade  of  labor  as  compared  with 
the  supply  of  other  grades  of  labor  with  which  it  has  to  be  combined  in  produc- 
tion, tends  to  make  each  laborer  in  that  grade  an  unimportant  factor  in  pro- 
duction, so  that  one  laborer  more  in  that  grade  adds  very  little  to,  and  one  laborer 
less  subtracts  very  little  from,  the  total  quantity  which  can  be  produced.    By  way 
of  illustration,  charcoal,  sulphur,  and  saltpeter  have  to  be  mixed  in  the  production 
of  gunpowder.    The  proportions  may  vary  within  rather  narrow  limits.    Suppose 
that  there  is  more  charcoal  than  can  be  satisfactorily  combined  with  the  existing 
supply  of  sulphur  and  saltpeter.    No  matter  how  much  demand  for  gunpowder 
there  may  be,  no  more  can  be  made  than  the  scarcer  factors  will  permit.    How- 
ever excellent  the  charcoal  may  be,  it  cannot  all  be  used  advantageously.    Under 
such  conditions,  one  pound  of  charcoal  more  or  less  will  have  very  little  influence 
on  the  total  production  of  gunpowder. 

The  different  factors  of  production,  including  the  various  kinds  of  human 
ability,  have  to  be  combined  in  production.  The  proportions  may  vary  within 
somewhat  wider  limits  than  can  the  ingredients  in  the  manufacture  of  gunpowder, 
but  the  principle  is  the  same. 

2  Just  as  scarce  labor  and  abundant  land  lead  inevitably  to  extensive  farming 
where  a  small  quantity  of  the  scarce  factor,  labor,  is  combined  with  a  large  quan- 
tity of  the  abundant  factor,  land,  so  a  relatively  small  supply  of  managing  ability 
and  a  relatively  large  supply  of  the  kind  of  labor  which  must  be  superintended 
leads  inevitably  to  a  combination  of  a  small  quantity  of  the  scarce  form  with  a 
large  quantity  of  the  abundant  form,  i.e.,  one  superintendent,  foreman,  or  boss, 
over  a  large  gang.   Again,  just  as  in  the  former  case  there  will  be  high  wages  and 
low  rent,  so  in  the  latter  case  there  will  be  high  salaries  and  low  wages. 

3  So  long  as  labor  is  scarce  and  dear,  and  land  abundant  and  cheap,  the  way 
is  easy  from  the  position  of  farm  laborer  to  that  of  farm  owner,  and  many  there 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  321 

III 

If  there  are  large  numbers  of  immigrants  belonging  to  races 
or  nationalities  which  do  not  fuse  with  the  rest  of  the  population 
by  free  intermarriage,  or  with  which  the  rest  of  the  population 
will  not  intermarry  freely,  there  will  result  one  of  the  three  fol- 
lowing conditions  : 

1 .  Geographical  separation  of  races ;  or 

2.  Social  separation  of  races,  i.e.,  in  the  formation  of  classes 
or  castes ;  one  race  or  the  other  becoming  subordinate ;  or 

3.  Continual    race   antagonism,    frequently  breaking   out   into 
race  war. 

28.    THE  INFLUENCE  OF  IMMIGRATION  UPON  THE 
NATIVE   BIRTH   RATE1 

Between  1850  and  1870  the  rate  of  increase  in  the  preexisting 
population  of  this  country  fell  sharply  off ;  and  between  1870  and  i 
1890  that  decline  has  gone  on  at  an  accelerated  ratio.  From  the 
first  appearance  of  foreigners  in  large  numbers  in  the  United 
States  the  rate  of  increase  among  them  has  been  greater  than 
among  those  whom  they  found  here ;  and  this  disproportion  has 
tended  continually,  ever  since,  to  increase.  But  has  this  result 
been  due  to  a  decline  in  physical  vitality  and  reproductive  vigor 
in  that  part  of  the  population  which  we  call,  by  comparison, 
American,  or  has  it  been  due  to  other  causes,  perhaps  to  the 
appearance  of  the  foreigners  themselves  ?  This  is  a  question 
which  requires  us  to  go  back  to  the  beginning  of  the  nation. 
The  population  of  1790  may  be  considered  to  have  been,  in  a 
high  sense,  American.  It  is  true  that  (leaving  the  Africans  out 
of  account)  it  was  all  of  European  stock  ;  but  immigration  had 
practically  ceased  on  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution,  in  1775,  and 
had  not  been  renewed,  to  any  important  extent,  at  the  occurrence 

be  that  find  it ;  but  when  labor  becomes  abundant  and  cheap,  and  land  scarce  and 
dear,  the  way  becomes  hard,  and  few  there  will  be  who  will  find  it. 

1  By  Francis  A.  Walker.  From  Discussions  in  Economics  and  Statistics,  Vol.  II. 
pp.  120-122,  420-426.  Henry  Holt  and  Company,  New  York,  1899.  This  paper 
was  originally  published  in  the  Forum,  Vol.  II  (1891),  pp.  634-643. 


322  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  the  first  census  ;  so  that  the  population  of  that  date  was  an 
acclimated,  and  almost  wholly  a  native,  population.  Now,  from 
1790  to  1800,  the  population  of  the  United  States  increased  35.10 
per  cent,  or  at  a  rate  which  would  have  enabled  population  to  be 
doubled  in  twenty-three  years ;  a  rate  transcending  that  main- 
tained, so  far  as  is  known,  over  any  extensive  region  for  any 
considerable  period  of  human  history.  And  during  this  time  the 
foreign  arrivals  were  insignificant,  being  estimated  at  only  50,000 
for  the  decade.  Again,  from  1800  to  1810,  population  increased 
by  36.38  per  cent.  Still  the  foreign  arrivals  were  few,  being 
estimated  at  only  70,000  for  the  ten  years.  Again,  between  1810 
and  1820,  the  rate  of  increase  was  33.07  per  cent,  and  still  im- 
migration remained  at  a  minimum,  the  arrivals  during  the  decade 
being  estimated  at  114,000.  Meanwhile  the  population  had  in- 
creased from  3,929,214  to  9,633,822. 

I  have  thus  far  spoken  of  the  foreign  arrivals  at  our  ports, 
as  estimated.  Beginning  with  1820,  however,  we  have  custom- 
house statistics  of  the  numbers  of  persons  annually  landing  upon 
our  shores*  Some  of  these,  indeed,  did  not  remain  here ;  yet, 
rudely  speaking,  we  may  call  them  all  immigrants.  Between 
1820  and  1830,  population  grew  to  12,866,020.  The  number  of 
foreigners  arriving  in  the  ten  years  was  151,000.  Here,  then, 
we  have  for  forty  years  an  increase,  substantially  all  out  of  the 
loins  of  the  four  millions  of  our  own  people  living  in  1790, 
amounting  to  almost  nine  millions,  or  227  per  cent.  Such  a  rate 
of  increase  was  never  known  before  or  since,  among  any  con- 
siderable population,  over  any  extensive  region. 

About  this  time,  however,  we  reach  a  turning  point  in  the  his- 
tory of  our  population.  In  the  decade  1830-1840  the  number  of 
foreign  arrivals  greatly  increased.  Immigration  had  not,  indeed, 
reached  the  enormous  dimensions  of  these  later  days.  Yet,  dur- 
ing the  decade  in  question,  the  foreigners  coming  to  the  United 
States  were  almost  exactly  fourfold  those  coming  in  the  decade 
preceding,  or  599,000.  The  question  now  of  vital  importance  is 
this :  Was  the  population  of  the  country  correspondingly  increased  ? 
I  answer,  No !  The  population  of  1 840  was  almost  exactly  what, 
by  computation,  it  would  have  been  had  no  increase  in  foreign 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS 


323 


arrivals  taken  place.  Again,  between  1840  and  1850,  a  still 
further  access  of  foreigners  occurred,  this  time  of  enormous  di- 
mensions, the  arrivals  of  the  decade  amounting  to  not  less  than 
1,713,000.  Of  this  gigantic  total,  1,048,000  were  from  the  Brit- 
ish Isles,  the  Irish  famine  of  1846-1847  having  driven  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  miserable  peasants  to  seek  food  upon  our  shores. 
Again  we  ask,  did  this  excess  constitute  a  net  gain  to  the  pop- 
ulation of  the  country  ?  Again  the  answer  is,  No  !  Population 
showed  no  increase  over  the  proportions  established  before  immi- 
gration set  in  like  a  flood.  In  other  words,  as  the  foreigners 
began  to  come  in  larger  numbers,  the  native  population  more 
and  more  withheld  their  own  increase. 

Now,  this  correspondence  might  be  accounted  for  in  three  dif- 
ferent ways:  (i)  It  might  be  said  that  it  was  a  mere  coincidence, 
no  relation  of  cause  and  effect  existing  between  the  two  phe- 
nomena. (2)  It  might  be  said  that  the  foreigners  came  because 
the  native  population  was  relatively  declining,  that  is,  failing  to 
'keep  up  its  pristine  rate  of  increase.  (3)  It  might  be  said  that 
the  growth  of  the  native  population  was  checked  by  the  incoming 
of  the  foreign  elements  in  such  large  numbers. 

The  view  that  the  correspondence  referred  to  was  a  mere  coin- 
cidence, purely  accidental  in  origin,  is  perhaps  that  most  com- 
monly taken.  If  this  be  the  true  explanation,  the  coincidence  is 
a  most  remarkable  one.  In  another  place,1  I  cited  the  predictions 

1  See  Fomm,  Vol.  II  (1891),  pp.  406-418.  Mr.  Walker  in  that  article  expressed 
himself  as  follows : 

The  first  census  of  the  United  States  showed  3,929,214  inhabitants.  The  second  census 
discovered  a  population  of  5,308,483,  a  gain  of  35.1  per  cent.  In  1810  the  population  reached 
7,239,881,  a  gain  of  36.38  per  cent  in  the  decade.  Taking  these  figures,  Mr.  Elkanah  Watson, 
about  1815,  constructed  a  table  of  the  probable  future  population  of  the  United  States,  which, 
for  the  next  four  censuses,  showed  a  marvelous  correspondence  with  the  ascertained  results, 
as  will  appear  by  the  following  table  :  — 


1820 

1830 

1840 

1850 

12   833   645 

23,185,368 

The  census    

9,633,822 

12,866,O2O 

17,069,453 

23,191,876 

Watson's  error       ... 

8,088 

-6,508 

What  was  it  that  enabled  a  prediction  to  be  made  so  close  as  almost  to  savor  of  magic  ? 
Here  was  a  man  computing  the  population  of  his  country,  not  to  within  10,  or  5,  or  3  per  cent, 


324 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


as  to  the  future  population  of  the  country,  made  by  Elkanah 
Watson,  tm  the  basis  of  the  censuses  of  1790,  1800,  and  1810, 
while  immigration  still  remained  at  a  minimum.  Now  let  us  place 
together  the  actual  census  figures  for  1840  and  1850,  Watson's 
estimates  for  those  years,  and  the  foreign  arrivals  during  the 
preceding  decade : 


1 

1840 

1850 

17,060,4^ 

2"?,  101,876 

\Vatson's  estimates    

1  7,i  1  6,^26 

2  vi  8;,-?  68 

The  difference  .              

—  47,07  * 

+  6,508 

Foreign  arrivals  during  preceding  decade     

t;  QQ.OOO 

1,7  I  "5.OOO 

but  to  within  one-fourth  part  of  one  in  a  thousand  ;  doing  this  thirty-five  years  in  advance, 
when  far  more  than  two  thirds  of  those  who  were  to  constitute  that  population  were  yet  to 
be  born,  and  when  one  half  of  the  marriages  from  which  such  births  were  to  result  were  yet  to 
be  contracted,  not  to  speak  of  courtships  to  be  conducted  and  acquaintanceships  to  be  formed  ! 
Yet  there  was  nothing  especially  deserving  admiration  in  Watson's  predictions.  The  author 
had  no  grasp  upon  the  future  beyond  what  other  men  possess.  His  estimates  were  not  even 
based  upon  a  careful  survey  of  the  soil  and  climate  of  the  country.  That  which  caused  the 
growth  of  numbers  through  the  earlier  decades  of  our  history  to  be  so  strikingly  uniform  was 
the  principle  of  population  operating  absolutely  without  check  among  a  people  spread  sparsely 
over  the  soil,  with  little  of  wealth  and  little  of  extreme  poverty,  and  with  nothing  to  make 
childbearing  a  burden.  Under  conditions  like  these,  population  increases  at  a  geometrica 
ratio  as  regularly  as  a  gas  expands  in  a  vacuum. 

About  1850  great  and  momentous  changes  began  to  appear  in  the  social  and  industrial 
life  of  the  American  people.  Manufactures  on  the  large  scale  were  introduced,  creating  vast 
factory  populations.  Commerce  began  to  build  up  great  cities.  The  gold  discoveries  in  Cali- 
fornia and  Australia  began  to  work  changes  almost  as  great  as  those  wrought  by  the  silver 
mines  of  Mexico  and  Peru  three  centuries  before.  The  distinction  between  the  very  rich  and 
the  very  poor  appeared  and  became  constantly  aggravated.  Fashion  inaugurated  its  reign  : 
luxurious  habits  and  tastes  spread  rapidly  ;  the  integrity  of  the  American  family  was  impaired, 
and  the  vice  of  "  boarding  "  grew  fast  by  indulgence.  In  icS6i  the  Civil  War  broke  out,  check- 
ing population  by  its  first  effects,  and  by  its  subsequent  influence  magnifying  all  the  causes 
that  have  been  indicated.  Finally,  vast  hordes  of  foreigners  began  to  arrive  upon  our  shores, 
drawn  from  the  degraded  peasantries  of  Europe,  accustomed  to  a  far  lower  standard  of  liv- 
ing, with  habits  strange  and  repulsive  to  our  people.  This,  again,  caused  the  native  popula- 
tion more  and  more  to  shrink  within  themselves,  creating  an  increasing  reluctance  to  bring 
forth  sons  and  daughters  to  compete  in  the  market  for  labor. 

Let  us  now  see  how  the  validity  of  Watson's  further  estimates  was  affected  by  these  changes: 


1860 

1870 

1880 

1890 

31,753.^24 
31,443,321 

42.32X.43:- 
38,558,3?' 

56,450,241 
5".  '55-  7% 

77,266,989 
62,622,250 

The  census     

Watson's  error    

+3'°,5°3 

+3,770,061 

+6,294.458 

+  14,644,739 

Watson's  final  estimate  —  that  for  1900  —  was  100,235,985. 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  325 

Here  we  see  that  in  spite  of  the  arrival  of  599,000  foreigners 
during  the  period  1830—1840,  four  times  as  many  as  had  arrived 
during  any  preceding  decade,  the  figures  of  the  census  coincided 
closely  with  the  estimate  of  "Watson,  based  on  the  growth  of  pop- 
ulation in  the  pre-immigration  era,  falling  short  of  it  by  only 
47,073  in  a  total  of  17,000,000;  while  in  1850  the  actual  popu- 
lation, in  spite  of  the  arrival  of  1,713,000  more  immigrants,  ex- 
ceeded Watson's  estimates  by  only  6508  in  a  total  of  23,000,000. 
Surely  if  this  correspondence  between  the  increase  of  the  foreign 
element  and  the  relative  decline  of  the  native  element  is  a  mere 
coincidence,  it  is  one  of  the  most  astonishing  in  human  history. 
The  actuarial  degree  of  improbability  as  to  a  coincidence  so  close, 
over  a  range  so  vast,  I  will  not  undertake  to  compute. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  it  be  alleged  that  the  relation  of  cause 
and  effect  existed  between  the  two  phenomena,  this  might  be 
put  in  two  widely  different  ways  ;  either  that  the  foreigners  came 
in  increasing  numbers  because  the  native  element  was  relatively 
declining,  or  that  the  native  element  failed  to  maintain  its  previ- 
ous rate  of  increase  because  the  foreigners  came  in  such  swarms. 
What  shall  we  say  of  the  former  of  these  explanations  ?  Does 
anything  more  need  to  be  said  than  that  it  is  too  fine  to  be  the 
real  explanation  of  a  big  human  fact  like  this  we  are  considering  ? 
To  assume  that  at  such  a  distance  in  space,  in  the  then  state  of 
news-communication  and  ocean-transportation,  and  in  spite  of  the 
ignorance  and  extreme  poverty  of  the  peasantries  of  Europe  from 
which  the  immigrants  were  then  generally  drawn,  there  was  so 
exact  a  degree  of  knowledge,  not  only  of  the  fact  that  the  native 
element  here  was  not  keeping  up  its  rate  of  increase,  but  also  of 
the  precise  ratio  of  that  decline,  as  to  enable  those  peasantries, 
with  or  without  a  mutual  understanding,  to  supply  just  the  numbers 
necessary  to  bring  our  population  up  to  its  due  proportions,  would 
be  little  less  than  laughable.  To-day,  with  quick  passages,  cheap 
freights,  and  ocean  cables,  there  is  not  a  single  wholesale  trade 
in  the  world  carried  on  with  this  degree  of  knowledge,  or  attain- 
ing anything  like  this  point  of  precision  in  results. 

The  true  explanation  of  the  remarkable  fact  we  are  consider- 
ing, I  believe  to  be  the  last  of  the  three  suggested.  The  access 


326  -READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  foreigners,  at  the  time  and  under  the  circumstances,  consti- 
tuted a  shock  to  the  principle  of  population  among  the  native 
element.  That  principle  is  always  acutely  sensitive,  alike  to  sen- 
timental and  to  economic  conditions.  And  it  is  to  be  noted  in 
passing,  that  not  only  did  the  decline  in  the  native  element,  as  a 
whole,  take  place  in  singular  correspondence  with  the  excess  of 
foreign  arrivals,  but  it  occurred  chiefly  in  just  those  regions  to 
which  the  newcomers  most  freely  resorted. 

But  what  possible  reason  can  be  suggested  why  the  incoming 
of  the  foreigner  should  have  checked  the  disposition  of  the  native 
toward  the  increase  of  population  at  the  traditional  rate  ?  I 
answer  that  the  best  of  good  reasons  can  be  assigned.  Through- 
out the  northeastern  and  northern  middle  States,  into  which, 
during  the  period  under  consideration,  the  newcomers  poured  in 
such  numbers,  the  standard  of  material  living,  of  general  intelli- 
gence, of  social  decency,  had  been  singularly  high.  Life,  even 
at  its  hardest,  had  always  had  its  luxuries  :  the  babe  had  been  a 
thing  of  beauty,  to  be  delicately  nurtured  and  proudly  exhibited  ; 
the  growing  child  had  been  decently  dressed,  at  least  for  school 
and  church  ;  the  house  had  been  kept  in  order,  at  whatever  cost, 
the  gate  hung,  the  shutters  in  place,  while  the  front  yard  had 
been  made  to  bloom  with  simple  flowers  ;  the  village  church,  the 
public  schoolhouse,  had  been  the  best  which  the  community,  with 
great  exertions  and  sacrifices,  could  erect  and  maintain.  Then 
came  the  foreigner,  making  his  way  into  the  little  village,  bring- 
ing —  small  blame  to  him  —  not  only  a  vastly  lower  standard  of 
living,  but  too  often  an  actual  present  incapacity  even  to  under- 
stand the  refinements  of  life  and  thought  in  the  community  in 
which  he  sought  a  home.  Our  people  had  to  look  upon  houses 
that  were  mere  shells  for  human  habitations,  the  gate  unhung, 
the  shutters  flapping  or  falling,  green  pools  in  the  yard,  babes 
and  young  children  rolling  about  half  naked  or  worse,  neglected, 
dirty,  unkempt.  Was  there  not  in  this  a  sentimental  reason 
strong  enough  to  give  a  shock  to  the  principle  of  population  ? 
But  there  was,  besides,  an  economic  reason  for  check  to  the 
native  increase.  The  American  shrank  from  the  industrial  com- 
petition thus  thrust  upon  him.  lie  was  unwilling  himself  to 


ECONOMIC  FACTORS  327 

engage  in  the  lowest  kind  of  day  labor  with  these  new  elements 
of  the  population  ;  he  was  even  more  unwilling  to  bring  sons  and 
daughters  into  the  world  to  enter  into  that  competition.  For  the 
first  time  in  our  history,  the  people  of  the  free  States  became 
divided  into  classes.  Those  classes  were  natives  and  foreigners. 
Politically,  the  distinction  had  only  a  certain  force,  which  yielded 
more  or  less  readily  under  partisan  pressure  ;  but  socially  and 
industrially  that  distinction  has  been  a  tremendous  power,  and  its 
chief  effects  have  been  wrought  upon  population.  Neither  the 
social  companionship  nor  the  industrial  competition  of  the  for- 
eigner has,  broadly  speaking,  been  welcome  to  the  native. 

It  hardly  needs  to  be  said  that  the  foregoing  descriptions  are 
not  intended  to  apply  to  all  of  the  vast  body  of  immigrants  dur- 
ing this  period.  Thousands  came  over  from  good  homes  ;  many 
had  had  all  the  advantages  of  education  and  culture ;  some 
possessed  the  highest  qualities  of  manhood  and  citizenship. 

But  let  us  proceed  with  the  census.  By  1860  the  causes 
operating  to  reduce  the  growth  of  the  native  element,  —  to  which 
had  then  manifestly  been  added  the  force  of  important  changes 
in  the  manner  of  living,  the  introduction  of  more  luxurious 
habits,  the  influence  of  city  life,  and  the  custom  of  "  boarding," 
—  had  reached  such  a  height  as,  in  spite  of  a  still-increasing 
immigration,  to  leave  the  population  of  the  country  310,503 
below  the  estimate.  The  fearful  losses  of  the  Civil  War  and  the 
rapid  extension  of  habits  unfavorable  to  increase  of  numbers, 
make  any  further  use  of  Watson's  computations  uninstructive ; 
yet  still  the  great  fact  protrudes  through  all  the  subsequent  his- 
tory of  our  population,  that  the  more  rapidly  foreigners  came  into 
the  United  States,  the  smaller  was  the  rate  of  increase,  not 
merely  among  the  native  population  separately,  but  throughout  the 
population  of  the  country,  as  a  whole,  including  the  foreigners. 
The  climax  of  this  movement  was  reached  when,  during  the 
decade  1880—1890,  the  foreign  arrivals  rose  to  the  monstrous  total 
of  five  and  a  quarter  millions  (twice  what  had  ever  before  been 
known),  while  the  population,  even  including  this  enormous  re- 
enforcement,  increased  more  slowly  than  in  any  other  period  of 
our  history,  except,  possibly,  that  of  the  great  Civil  War. 


328  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

If  the  foregoing  views  are  true,  or  contain  any  considerable 
degree  of  truth,  foreign  immigration  into  this  country  has,  from  the 
time  it  first  assumed  large  proportions,  amounted,  not  to  a  reenforce- 
ment  of  our  population,  but  to  a  replacement  of  native  by  foreign 
stock.  That  if  the  foreigners  had  not  come,  the  native  element 
would  long  have  filled  the  places  the  foreigners  usurped,  I  enter- 
tain not  a  doubt.  The  competency  of  the  American  stock  to  do 
this  it  would  be  absurd  to  question,  in  the  face  of  such  a  record 
as  that  for  1790-1830.  During  the  period  from  1830-1860 
the  material  conditions  of  existence  in  this  country  were  contin- 
ually becoming  more  and  more  favorable  to  the  increase  of  popula- 
tion from  domestic  sources.  The  old  man-slaughtering  medicine 
was  being  driven  out  of  civilized  communities ;  houses  were 
becoming  larger ;  the  food  and  clothing  of  the  people  were 
becoming  ampler  and  better.  Nor  was  the  cause  which,  about 
1840  or  1850,  began  to  retard  the  growth  of  population  here,  to 
be  found  in  the  climate.  .  .  .  The  climate  of  the  United  States 
has  been  benign  enough  to  enable  us  to  take  the  English  short- 
horn and  greatly  to  improve  it,  as  the  reexportation  of  that 
animal  to  England  at  monstrous  prices  abundantly  proves  ;  to 
take  the  English  race  horse  and  to  improve  him  to  a  degree  of 
which  the  startling'  victories  of  Parole,  Iroquois,  and  Foxhall 
afford  but  a  suggestion  ;  to  take  the  English  man  and  to  improve 
him  too,  adding  agility  to  his  strength,  making  his  eye  keener 
and  his  hand  steadier,  so  that  in  rowing,  in  riding,  in  shooting, 
and  in  boxing,  the  American  of  pure  English  stock  is  to-day  the 
better  animal.  Whatever  were  the  causes  which  checked  the 
growth  of  the  native  population,  they  were  neither  physiologi- 
cal nor  climatic.  They  were  mainly  social  and  economic  ;  and 
chief  among  them  was  the  access  of  vast  hordes  of  foreign 
immigrants,  bringing  with  them  a  standard  of  living  at  which 
our  own  people  revolted. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT 

Is  immigration  swamping  America?  330.  —  Economic  interests,  331. —  Conflict- 
ing fears  and  hopes,  332.  —  The  cost  of  exclusion,  333.  —  Amalgamation,  333. — 
The  social  barrier,  334.  —  Race  prejudice,  334.  —  Assimilation  inevitable,  336. — 
American  influence  preponderant,  336.  —  The  unassimilated,  337.  —  The  second 
generation,  337. —  Should  they  learn  English  only?  339.  —  Parochial  schools, 
340.  —  The  intoxication  of  making  money,  343.  —  Democracy  vs.  the  melting  pot, 
344.  —  Unity  of  national  spirit  dependent  upon  like-mindedness,  344.  —  Ethnic 
segregation,  346.  —  "Americanization,"  347.  —  Ethnic  dualism  vs.  economic 
dualism,  351.  —  Forces  for  and  against  assimilation,  358.  —  Nationalistic  group- 
consciousness,  359.  —  Disappearance  of  the  old  unity  of  American  spirit,  365. — 
Is  assimilation  possible  or  desirable  ?  366. 

[Students  of  the  immigration  problem  may  for  some  purposes 
be  divided  into  two  groups,  those  who  consider  the  main  practical 
question  to  be  the  distribution  and  assimilation  of  immigrants 
after  their  arrival  in  this  country,  and  those  whose  studies  lead 
them  to  the  conclusion  that,  however  important  the  task  of  assim- 
ilation, it  is  made  ever  more  difficult  and  increasingly  less  pos- 
sible of  accomplishment  unless  an  effective  check  is  placed  upon 
the  numbers  of  aliens  coming  to  our  shores.  Those  who  empha- 
size the  duty  of  distribution  and  assimilation  are  as  a  rule  not 
advocates  of  the  restriction  of  immigration.  It  is  interesting  to 
note  that  they  are  often  women,  or  men  of  foreign  birth  or 
parentage,  students  who  in  one  way  or  another  have  come  into 
intimate  personal  contact  with  immigrants,  either  in  social  work 
or  study  abroad,  and  whose  sympathies  for  the  immigrant  as  a 
person  are  therefore  keen  and  active.  It  is  possible  that  the 
advocates  of  restriction,  in  their  realization  of  the  economic  forces 
operative  in  the  long  run  under  unrestricted  immigration  to  bring 
this  country  to  the  old-world  level,  are  sometimes  lacking  in  a 
vivid  sympathy  for  the  oppressed  foreigner  or  the  trials  of  the 
excluded  alien  turned  back  from  Ellis  Island.  On  the  other  hand 

329 


330  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

it  is  a  question  whether  the  more  sympathetic  students  do  not  to 
some  extent,  in  their  realization  of  the  specific  evils  of  the  present 
immigrant  traffic,  lose  sight  of  the  much  greater  evils  possibly  in 
store  for  the  future  inhabitants  of  this  country,  should  the  present 
nonrestrictive  policy  be  persisted  in.  Meanwhile  the  fact  that 
here  and  there  a  writer  from  one  or  another  of  the  new  immi- 
grant stocks  is  rising  to  question  the  need  of  assimilation  is  not 
without  significance.] 

29.   THE  QUESTION  OF  ASSIMILATION1 

Many  Americans  feel  bitterly  that  this  [American]  unity  is  now 
seriously  threatened  by  the  increasing  variety  and  number  of  the 
new  contingents  of  immigrants.  In  the  five-year  period  following 
1900,  the  immigration  other  than  English  and  English-speaking 
amounted  to  one  in  twenty  of  the  population  of  1900.2  More- 
over, the  foreign  population  is  known  to  multiply  faster  than  the 
native  element,  at  least  in  parts  of  the  country  where  the  data 
have  been  collected,  and  perhaps  generally.  It  is  therefore  clear 
that  as  long  as  conditions  remain  unchanged,  the  relative  amount 
of  old  American  stock  must  progressively  lessen. 

We  say,  as  long  as  conditions  remain  the  same,  but  any  of 
these  conditions  may  change.  For  instance,  on  the  one  hand  the 
volume  of  immigration  may  fall  off  from  economic  causes,  or  it 
may  be  checked  by  American  action.  On  the  other,  the  foreign 
element  may  reduce  its  rate  of  multiplication  to  the  American 
rate  or  less  as  it  becomes  Americanized.  As  regards  the  volume 
of  immigration,  it  is  obvious  that  we  need  not  stand  passive,  as 
before  an  uncontrollable  natural  phenomenon.  It  stands  open  to 
us  to  permit  or  refuse  admission  to  the  country. 

Doubtless  the  most  important  issue  involved  is  the  racial  one. 
But  here  we  are  paralyzed  by  our  comprehensive  ignorance  of 
the  actual  results  of  race  crossings.  Those  who  should  be  expert 
give  the  most  contrary  opinions.  "Only  pure  races  are  strong." 

1  Hy  Emily  Greene  Halch.  Adapted  from  Our  Slavic  Fellow-Citizens,  pp.  400- 
425.  Charities  Publication  Committee,  New  York,  1910. 

'2  This  is  gross  reckoning  without  allowance  for  emigrants  returning  to  Europe. 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  331 

"  Only  mixed  races  are  strong."  "  Mixture  within  certain  degrees 
of  unlikeness  is  desirable  ;  beyond  that  line,  disastrous." 

The  investigation  of  the  Immigration  Commission  under  Pro- 
fessor Boas  appears  to  point  to  an  unexpected  and  very  rapid 
assimilation  of  physical  type  among  the  children  of  immigrants, 
quite  apart  from  racial  intermixture.1 

Whatever  the  truth  as  to  national  eugenics,  in  practice  all  other 
considerations  are  dwarfed  by  the  economic  interests  involved. 
The  question  is  and  should  be  discussed  in  its  physical,  ethical, 
humanitarian,  social,  and  political  aspects,  but  it  is  decided,  in 
our  present  stage  of  moral  development,  by  bread-and-butter  con- 
siderations, from  the  point  of  view  of  American  interests.  But 
economic  interests  themselves  diverge  and  conflict.  So  far  as  the 
nation  desires  to  increase  national  production,  commercial  pros- 
perity, dividends,  and  rentals,  so  far  it  favors  the  inflow  of  labor 
to  increase  the  product  of  our  national  "plant"  -  of  our  land 
capital,  and  directing  energies.  On  the  other  hand,  so  far  as  the 
nation  desires  to  raise  the  standard  of  living  of  the  mass  of  the 
citizens,  to  extend  democracy  within  the  country  on  economic  and 
social  as  well  as  on  political  lines,  in  a  word,  to  raise  wages  and  in- 
crease the  influence  of  the  workingman,  —  so  far  it  is  opposed  to 
the  admission  of  new  and  cheaper  competitors  on  the  labor  market. 

Hitherto  the  first  set  of  interests  has  prevailed,  with  one  main 
exception.  Where,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Chinese,  race  prejudice 
has  reenforced  the  economic  interests  of  the  employee,  those 
interests  have  prevailed  and  the  aliens  have  been  excluded. 
Otherwise  the  employer's  policy  has  prevailed,  subject  to  certain 
modifications,  —  to  provisos  as  to  personal  character,  health,  etc., 
which  are  qualitatively  valuable  but  negligible  in  a  quantitative 
consideration.  The  same  is  true  of  the  law  against  importing 
labor  under  contract,  which  modifies  in  the  interests  of  the  em- 
ployee the  terms  under  which  immigrants  may  enter  the  country, 
but  which  is  easily  substantially  evaded,  does  not  necessarily  cut 
down  the  number  of  arrivals,  and  is  in  several  respects  a  two- 
edged  weapon. 

1  See  U.  S.  Immigration  Commission,  "  Report  on  Changes  in  the  Bodily 
Form  of  Immigrants." 


332  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

In  this  counterpoise  of  conflicting  class  interests  it  is  conceiv- 
able that  the  views  of  those  who  try  to  consider  the  interests  of 
no  one  class,  of  no  one  nation,  might  turn  the  balance,  or  at 
least  make  themselves  felt  to  some  effect.  But  the  idealists  differ 
among  themselves. 

Some  see  in  the  American  republic  the  trustee  for  humanity 
of  an  experiment  in  democracy,  the  greatest  in  scale,  the  most 
favored  in  conditions,  of  which  there  is  any  hope.  They  be- 
lieve the  Anglo-Saxon  to  have  peculiar  ability  and  tact  in  self- 
government,  and  they  see  in  the  dilution  of  this  stock  by  others, 
and  in  every  new  complication  of  the  problem  by  extraneous  diffi- 
culties, a  threat  of  a  world-tragedy  —  the  shipwreck  of  the 
American  enterprise  in  democracy. 

On  the  other  hand,  with  still  wider  horizon  and  still  more  dar- 
ing faith  stand  those  who  see  in  this  enormous  migration  a  new 
advance  in  the  slow  process  of  the  growth  of  humanity.  They 
see  the  newcomers  drawn  from  layers  of  population  where  pres- 
sure is  greatest  and  progress  least  possible,  into  situations  where 
for  the  first  time  they  meet  opportunity ;  where  they  not  only 
"  have  their  chance,"  but  where  they,  and  still  more  their  children, 
do  actually  gain,  not  in  comfort  only,  but  in  freedom,  thought- 
fulness  and  self-respect ;  where,  with  all  that  they  lose,  they  on 
the  whole  profit  as  men.  They  see  this  new  freedom,  these  new 
demands  on  life,  together  with  the  skill  and  enterprise  to  make 
their  realization  possible,  this  new  spirit  of  hope  and  progress 
reacting  in  turn  on  the  old  countries,  helping  them  to  reach 
higher  levels.  At  the  same  time  they  hope  that  the  newcomers 
in  America  will  bring  fresh,  vigorous  blood  to  a  rather  sterile  and 
inbred  stock,  and  that  they  will  add  valuable  varieties  of  inherit- 
ance to  a  rather  puritanical,  one-sided  culture  rich  in  middle-class 
commonplace,  but  poor  in  the  power  of  creating  beauty  except  in 
the  one  great  field  of  literature. 

Before  such  a  vast  world  movement  as  the  modern  wage 
migrations  it  is  impossible  not  to  feel  awestruck,  not  to  realize 
how  little  it  is  possible  for  contemporaries  to  gauge  the  results 
and  to  compute  advantages.  In  the  face  of  this  doubt,  the 
burden  of  proof  seems  to  be  on  those  who  would  interfere,  who 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  333 

would  turn  back  to  their  crowded  homelands  the  hordes  who  are 
moving  in  the  direction  of  promised  advantage  to  themselves, 
drawn  by  the  demand  of  those  who  desire  their  services. 

It  is  easy  to  talk  lightly  of  more  or  less  arbitrary  exclusion 
rules,  of  illiteracy  tests,  and  so  forth,  until  one  realizes  the  sort 
of  social  surgery  that  they  involve.  It  is  not  possible  to  lower 
the  portcullis  without  cutting  into  living  flesh.  A  large  propor- 
tion of  those  excluded  will  necessarily  be  people  bound  by  the 
tenderest  ties  to  those  already  in  this  country.  The  individual 
cases  as  they  occur  make  this  only  too  real  to  the  spectator  in  an 
immigration  inquiry  court  room.  The  most  reasonable  rules  of 
exclusion  work  personal  havoc.  I  have  seen  a  mother  fainting 
before  the  judges  who  excluded  (as  they  were  bound  by  law  to 
do)  her  little  feeble-minded  boy.  Such  cases  are  inevitable  under 
any  hard  and  fast  rule,  and  one  must  face  them  as  one  faces  the 
cruel  by-results  of  any  well-meant  legislation ;  but  it  should  at 
least  be  realized  that  every  exclusion  provision  multiplies  such 
cases.  There  is  no  point  at  which  the  stream  of  immigration  can 
be  severed  without  the  most  tragic  results  to  individual  families. 
Certain  measures  can,  however,  be  urged  with  a  united  front  by 
persons  of  the  most  diverse  opinions.  Among  these  measures 
are,  first,  the  abolition  of  the  steerage  and  the  requirement  of  the 
equivalent  of  the  present  second-cabin  accommodations  for  all  pas- 
sengers ;  and  secondly,  the  presence  of  a  United  States  official 
and  above  all  of  a  matron  on  every  vessel  bringing  any  consider- 
able number  of  immigrants.  These  requirements,  in  making  im- 
migration more  expensive,  would  restrict  it  in  a  natural  way  and 
without  increasing  the  number  of  debarments  and  deportations. 

But  whatever  the  future  dimensions  of  the  stream  of  immi- 
gration, it  has  already  irrevocably  planted  here  a  great  collection 
of  representatives  of  different  peoples.  Obviously,  if  the  old  unity 
is  to  be  maintained  or  regained  it  must  be  in  one  of  two  ways. 
Either  there  must  be  actual  fusion  through  mingling  of  blood  in 
intermarriage  and  the  creation  of  one  new  common  stock,  with 
the  unity  that  this  implies,  or  short  of  this  it  must  be  a  spiritual 
fusion  alone  —  assimilation  —  the  growth  into  similarity  in  speech, 
ways,  and  thoughts. 


334  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

As  regards  the  Slav  in  particular,  there  is  not  very  much  to 
be  said  in  regard  to  racial  amalgamation.  In  the  first  place,  there 
is  no  physical  barrier  to  intermarriage  between  Slavs  and  Amer- 
icans, nor  even  so  much  physical  unlikeness  as  in  the  case  of 
Italians .  and  Jews,  with  their  more  southern  characteristics.  A 
Slav  of  the  second  or  third  generation  in  America  would  be 
likely  to  look,  for  better  or  worse,  much  like  "anybody  else."  I 
should  judge  that  on  the  basis  of  bodily  appearance  the  much- 
mixed  Slavic  peoples  were  at  least  as  similar  to  the  much-mixed 
American  stock  as,  say,  the  French  or  the  Scandinavians. 

The  barrier  is  social  and  psychical,  not  physical.  This  barrier 
is  probably  overcome  most  easily  in  the  highest  and  lowest  social 
classes ;  on  the  one  hand,  in  the  circles  of  society  where  people 
belong  to  a  more  or  less  cosmopolitan  monde,  on  the  other,  at 
the  bottom,  where  attractions  of  sex  and  personal  convenience  are 
not  complicated  by  much  regard  for  estranging  abstract  ideas. 

Elsewhere  intermarriage  is  likely  to  be  deferred  till  the  sense 
of  national  difference  in  the  individual  case  has  almost  reached 
the  vanishing  point.  The  newcomer  is  likely  to  overcome  his 
standoffishness  sooner  than  the  old  resident.  Partly  on  this 
account,  but  more  because  of  the  scarcity  of  foreign  women,  cases 
of  mixed  marriages  in  which  the  man,  the  active  party  in  bring- 
ing about  a  marriage,  is  foreign  while  the  wife  is  native-born, 
are,  as  the  census  figures  indicate,  over  twice  as  many  as  cases 
of  a  foreign  wife  with  a  native  husband.  It  is  also  interesting  to 
notice  that  it  is  nearly  five  times  as  common  for  a  foreigner  and  a 
native  to  marry,  as  for  foreigners  from  two  different  countries  to 
intermarry.  Native,  however,  may  mean  of  the  same  nationality 
as  the  other  partner,  only  of  the  first  generation  in  America.1 

This    deep-seated    antipathy   or   contempt    for    the   unlike  - 
less  than  kin  being  regarded  as  naturally  "less  than  kind"  —is 

1  The  figures  that  we  have  to  go  by  are  those  of  the  1900  census  in  regard  to 
the  percentage  of  white  persons  born  in  this  country,  and  their  meaning  is  sub- 
ject to  many  qualifications.  It  must  not  be  forgotten,  for  instance,  that  what 
appear  to  be  mixed  foreign  marriages  may  involve  no  more  mingling  than  a 
marriage  between  Russian  and  Polish  Jews,  or  Austrian  and  Bavarian  Germans. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  9,000,000  persons  born  of  unmixed  foreign  marriages 
doubtless  represent  largely  marriages  contracted  before  coming  to  America. 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  335 

especially  to  be  regretted  in  a  country  like  ours.  The  incoming 
groups  bring  it  with  them,  and  they  find  it  here  —  and  not  only 
among  the  ignorant. 

Especially  is  there  always  a  tendency  to  undervalue  any  nation- 
ality which  is  known  in  real  life  only  by  representatives  of  its 
lower  social  strata.  A  rather  imposing  New  York  lady  whom  I 
met  returning  from  Europe  told  me  that  she  had  been  surprised 
to  find  Italy  such  a  civilized  country.  I  must  have  shown  my 
wonder,  for  she  excused  herself  by  saying  that  of  course  she 
knew  better,  but  she  always  thought  of  it  as  a  country  of  fruit 
peddlers  and  dirty,  ignorant  laborers.  To  many  a  New  England 
child  the  appreciation  of  the  fact  that  there  are  Irish  people  of 
social  prestige  comes  rather  late  and  with  some  sense  of  surprise. 
So  the  Germans,  the  Greeks,  the  Jews,  the  Swedes,  the  Chinese, 
suffer  in  the  estimation  of  the  half-educated  and  snobbish  where- 
ever  they  are  represented  by  the  poor  immigrant  class. 

It  is  a  shock  when  we  meet,  not  with  humiliated  acquiescence 
in  our  supercilious  judgments,  but  with  a  corresponding  contempt 
for  ourselves,  when  we  learn,  for  instance,  that  we  are  physically 
unpleasant  to  the  Japanese  owing  to  a  personal  odor  which  they 
associate  with  our  meat  eating.  It  is  indeed  hard  for  the  idea 
that  others  do  not  admire  us  to  penetrate  our  American  minds, 
but  when  it  does  enter,  it  lets  in  light. 

The  reciprocal  feeling  of  repulsion  shows  itself  especially  in  the 
tendency  of  different  nationalities  to  draw  apart.  The  phenom- 
enon is  familiar  enough  in  the  tenement  districts,  but  the  same 
thing  occurs,  for  instance,  in  a  Texas  country  town  where  I  found 
that  the  Germans  and  Bohemians,  \vho  were  the  main  inhabitants, 
seemed  to  mix  as  little  as  oil  and  water.  Each  of  these  two  nation- 
alities had  its  own  separate  public  school ;  in  the  one,  named  Ger- 
mania,  both  English  and  German  were  taught ;  in  the  Bohemian 
school  English  only,  Bohemian  not  being  permitted  by  the  author- 
ities (county  or  state,  I  do  not  know  which).  The  Americans  who 
used  to  live  in  the  place  had,  most  of  them,  moved  away.  There 
seemed  to  be  no  friction,  only  a  desire  not  to  mingle.  One  con- 
stantly runs  across  this  fact,  that  the  old  settlers  tend  to  withdraw 
as  soon  as  they  begin  to  be  irked  by  a  foreign  atmosphere. 


336  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Fusion,  then,  we  can  expect  only  as  we  outgrow  these  antipa- 
thies and  invidious  comparisons.  Aside  from  these  there  is  noth- 
ing to  keep  white  peoples  apart,  and  it  is  hard  to  resist  the 
conclusion  that  after  a  lapse  of  time  which  no  one  can  forecast, 
a  fused  and  welded  people  will  be  the  outcome,  and  that  we  are 
beholding  the  gradual  creation  of  a  new  race  of  mankind. 

To  turn  to  the  previous  question,  assimilation  as  distinct  from 
fusion,  it  is  clear  that  the  difficulty  often  lies  in  the  fact  that  the 
process  is  regarded  as  a  one-sided  one,  as  mere  absorption  or, 
indeed,  as  a  form  of  conquest  and  extirpation.  "  We  two  shall 
be  one  and  I  will  be  the  one."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  men  grow 
alike  in  intercourse  as  inevitably  as  two  communicating  bodies  of 
water  reach  the  same  level.  But  the  level  reached  is  a  new  one, 
not  that  of  either  before  the  interchange  began. 

In  America  each  immigrant  group  exerts  a  certain  influence 
on  the  community  into  which  it  comes,  and  some  newly  imported 
customs  take  root,  either  because  they  are  attractive  or  useful  in 
themselves,  or  because  the  newcomers  are  so  represented  as  to 
have  local  prestige  ;  but  the  laws  of  imitation  work  out  on  the 
whole  to  effect  a  much  greater  change  in  the  immigrants  than  in 
the  old  settled  American  community. 

In  the  first  place,  the  convenience  of  unity  makes  for  Amer- 
icanization. The  different  immigrant  groups  neutralize  one  an- 
other's influence.  In  the  steerage  of  an  eastward  bound  liner  one 
finds  perhaps  Roumanians,  Croatians,  Jews,  Germans,  Italians, 
using  English  as  their  lingua  franca,  —  men,  some  of  them  from 
the  same  village  at  home,  yet  unable  to  speak  with  one  another 
until  now.  It  is  c  pluribns  itnmn  in  a  new  sense. 

Again,  in  America  the  way  to  success  on  a  large  scale  (whether 
political  or  financial  or  social  or  literary  success),  the  only  way  to 
a  national  influence  or  position,  is  the  way  out  of  the  Ghetto, 
Little  Italy  or  "  Bohemian  Town."  Thus  American  ways  have 
practical  value,  whether  good  or  bad  in  themselves. 

Further,  the  prestige  of  numbers  is  on  the  side  of  the  Amer- 
ican example,  and  the  more  so  the  more  scattered  the  newcomers 
are.  In  a  close  colony  the  influence  is  the  other  way  for  those 
inside,  yet  even  so,  the  attraction  of  the  American  mass  makes 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  337 

itself  felt.  The  larger  life  tends  to  absorb  the  smaller  group.  In- 
deed, the  prestige  of  America,  and  the  almost  hypnotic  influence 
of  this  prestige  on  the  poorer  class,  of  immigrants,  is  often  both 
pathetic  and  absurd.  They  cannot  throw  away  fast  enough  good 
things  and  ways  that  they  have  brought  with  them,  to  replace 
them  by  sometimes  inferior  American  substitutes. 

Thus,  under  the  joint  influence  of  convenience,  ambition  and 
the  natural  human  desire  to  be  like  other  people,  and  especially 
to  be  like  those  who  occupy  the  high  seats  in  the  synagogue,  the 
unifying  change  goes  on.  The  early  Polish  immigrants,  patriots 
and  men  of  education,  melted  into  the  common  life  so  completely 
that  later  comers  could  find  no  point  of  attachment  with  them. 
The  recent  Slavic  immigrants,  Poles  and  others,  have  come  in 
much  larger  numbers  ;  they  have  formed  considerable  colonies, 
and  their  hearts  are  set,  with  a  strength  of  desire  which  we  can 
hardly  conceive,  on  having  their  children  speak  their  own  lan- 
guage as  their  proper  tongue.  The  consequence  is  some  degree 
of  success  in  this  aim,  but  it  means,  I  am  convinced,  only  a 
retardation  of  the  process. 

In  Cleveland  a  Bohemian-American  teacher  who  took  the 
school  census  found  one  or  two  young  people  in  their  early 
"teens,"  born  in  this  country,  yet  unable  to  understand  English. 
This  was  considered,  however,  very  unusual.  I  was  told  of  a 
Hungarian  who  went  to  live  in  Prague,  but  there  in  the  capital 
of  Bohemia  he  never  learned  the  language,  as  he  found  he  could 
get  on  with  German  which  he  knew.  Later  he  moved  to  Chicago 
and  lived  in  the  Bohemian  quarter,  where  he  found  it  indispen- 
sable to  learn  Bohemian,  and  did  so,  with  toil  and  pains.  I  have 
heard  of  graduates  of  Polish  schools  in  Chicago  and  Baltimore 
who  do  not  understand  English. 

A  thousand  more  items  to  show  the  separateness  of  the  foreign 
life  in  our  midst  might  be  piled  together,  and  in  the  end  they 
would  be  as  nothing  against  the  irresistible  influence  through 
which  it  comes  about  that  the  immigrants  find  themselves  the 
parents  of  American  children.  They  are  surprised,  they  are 
proud,  they  are  scandalized,  they  are  stricken  to  the  heart  with 
regret,  —  whatever  their  emotion,  they  are  powerless.  The  change 


333  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

occurs  in  different  ways  among  the  educated  and  the  uneducated, 
but  it  occurs  in  either  case. 

The  prestige  of  America  and  the  hatred  of  children  for  being 
different  from  their  playmates  is  something  the  parents  cannot 
stand  against.  The  result  is  often  grotesque.  A  graduate  at  one 
of  our  women's  colleges,  the  daughter  of  cultivated  Germans,  told 
a  friend :  "  My  father  made  me  learn  German  and  always  was 
wanting  me  to  read  it.  I  hated  to  have  anything  to  do  with  it. 
It  seemed  to  me  something  inferior.  People  in  the  West  call  a 
thing  '  Dutch '  as  a  term  of  scorn.  It  was  not  till  I  was  in  col- 
lege  that  I  realized  what  German  literature  and  philosophy  have 
meant  in  the  world,  and  that  to  be  a  German  is  not  a  thing  to 
be  ashamed  of."  Less  educated  parents,  or  those  using  a  language 
less  important  than  German,  have  a  still  more  difficult  task  to 
hold  the  next  generation.  "  I  ain't  no  Hun,  I'm  an  American," 
expresses  their  reaction  on  the  situation. 

In  a  Nebraska  county  town,  in  a  district  largely  settled  by 
Bohemians,  one  father  of  a  family  told  me  his  experience.  The 
older  children,  he  said,  spoke  Bohemian  excellently,  they  used  to 
take  part  in  private  theatricals  in  the  Bohemian  opera  house  in 
the  town  and  did  well ;  but  the  younger  children  he  simply  could 
not  induce  to  take  to  it.  They  knew  so  little  that  if  he  sent  them 
with  a  message  in  Bohemian  they  were  likely  to  make  mistakes. 

This,  I  think,  is  typical.  In  remote  country  settlements,  or  in 
city  colonies  of  a  marked  national  character,  there  are  plenty  of 
exceptions,  but  I  am  confident  that  the  rule  is  as  stated  by  the 
Nebraska  Bohemian.  I  have  found  instances  of  individual  Amer- 
icans learning  Polish,  Bohemian  or  other  languages  as  a  matter 
of  convenience,  business  or  pleasure,  or  as  children  among  play- 
mates, but  I  have  never  heard  of  a  community  where  the  process 
worked  in  general  away  from  Knglish,  not  toward  it. 

With  the  acquisition  of  English  the  children  are  apt  to  lose 
their  parents'  language.  Against  this  the  parents  strive.  It  is 
very  common,  for  instance,  for  the  parents  to  endeavor  to  have 
the  children  speak  only  the  old  language  until  they  go  to  school, 
knowing  that  this  is  their  one  opportunity  to  acquire  it,  and  fore- 
seeing that  after  the  children  have  entered  school,  they  will  speak 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  339 

English  not  only  outside  of  the  home  but  within  it,  too,  so  that 
it  will  be  impossible  to  keep  English  from  becoming  also  the 
family  language.  Henceforth  the  parents  must  talk  with  their 
own  children  in  a  foreign  medium  in  which  they  are  consciously 
at  a  disadvantage.  Is  it  strange  if  the  parents  desire  to  avoid 
these  difficulties  ? 

What  should  be  the  American's  attitude  toward  this  question  ? 
I  personally  have  no  doubt  that  the  right  thing  to  do  is  to  wish 
the  parents  godspeed  in  their  endeavor  to  have  their  children 
learn  their  language.  One  of  the  great  evils  among  the  children 
of  foreigners,  as  everyone  who  knows  them  realizes,  is  the  dis- 
astrous gulf  between  the  older  and  the  younger  generations. 
Discipline,  in  this  new  freedom  which  both  parents  and  children 
misunderstand,  is  almost  impossible  ;  besides  which,  the  children, 
who  have  to  act  as  interpreters  for  their  parents  and  do  business 
for  them,  are  thrown  into  a  position  of  unnatural  importance,  and 
feel  only  contempt  for  old-world  ways,  a  feeling  enhanced  by  the 
too  common  American  attitude.  One  hears  stories  of  Italian 
children  refusing  to  reply  to  their  mother  if  spoken  to  in  Italian.1 

In  addition  to  these  considerations,  and  to  the  sufficiently 
obvious  fact  that  to  possess  two  languages  instead  of  one  is  in  itself 
an  intellectual  advantage,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  leaders 
and  teachers  of  the  newcomers  must  be  men  who  can  speak  both 
languages,  and  that  it  would  be  a  national  misfortune  if  these 
were  solely  men  of  foreign  birth,  including  none  of  the  second, 
or  later,  generations  in  this  country.  A  final  and  less  important 
consideration  is  that  to  know  any  immigrant  language  is  money 
in  a  man's  pocket. 

An  unfortunate  element  of  difficulty  is  a  common  American 
jealousy  of  any  speech  but  English.  I  was  amused  at  the  tact 
with  which  this  feeling  was  disarmed  when  some  Bohemians 
once  wanted  to  get  permission  to  use  a  public  schoolroom  out  of 
hours  for  a  Bohemian  class.  "  If  there  should  ever  be  a  war," 
their  spokesman  said,  "  our  boys  would  be  among  the  first  to 

1  Cf.  the  wise  and  brief  article  on  "  The  Struggle  in  the  Family  Life,"  by  Miss 
McDowell,  of  The  University  of  Chicago  Settlement.  Charities,  Vol.  XIII  (Dec.  3, 
1904),  pp.  196-197. 


340  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

volunteer.  The  Bohemian  lad  at  the  front  would  have  to  write  in 
English  to  his  mother,  and  though  she  could  not  read  his  letter 
she  could  readily  find  someone  to  translate  it  to  her.  But  the 
Bohemian  letters  which  he  received  from  her,  and  which,  among 
the  demoralizing  life  of  the  camp  have  such  precious  possibilities 
of  influence,  would  be  entirely  useless,  for  he  would  not  be  able  to 
read  a  word  of  them."  The  use  of  the  schoolroom  was  granted. 

We  cannot  be  surprised,  however  much  we  may  regret  it,  that 
the  duty  of  maintaining  separate  schools  is  urged  on  their  people 
by  clerical  and  other  leaders,  on  both  patriotic  and  religious 
grounds.  Among  the  Slavs  the  Poles  have  done  the  most  in  this 
field.  Both  good  priests  who  fear  change  on  account  of  its  threat 
to  all  that  they  hold  most  sacred,  and  greedy  priests  who  desire 
to  keep  their  hold  for  lower  reasons,  naturally  strain  every  nerve  to 
encourage  parochial  schools.  Father  Kruszka  estimates  that  at 
the  beginning  of  1901  there  were  in  the  United  States  about 
70,000  pupils  in  Polish  Catholic  schools  alone.  These  schools 
undertake  to  train  the  children  in  religion  and  in  the  Polish 
language  and  Polish  history,  as  well  as  in  the  regular  public- 
school  branches.  English  is  taught  as  a  subject  throughout  the 
classes,  and  generally  some  of  the  other  subjects  are  taught  in 
English,  as  for  instance,  geography,  United  States  history,  and 
bookkeeping  and  algebra  for  those  who  get  so  far.  It  is  claimed 
by  those  interested,  that  children  leaving  these  schools  for  the 
public  schools  enter  classes  above  or  on  a  level  with  those  they 
have  left.1  I  have  seen  parochial  schools  that  were  subject  to 
criticism  from  the  point  of  view  of  modern  arrangements  for  the 
health  and  comfort  of  the  pupils,  and  which  were  primitive  in 
various  ways  (the  same  might  be  said,  alas,  of  some  public 
schools),  but  one  must  admire  the  devotion  of  these  often  very 
ignorant  and  poor  people,  who  out  of  their  slender  means  build 
and  support  all  these  schools,  when  free  schools  are  already 
provided  out  of  the  taxes. 

Outside  of  the  Roman  Catholic  groups  —  for  instance  among  the 
Greek  Catholic  Ruthenians  and  the  freethinking  Bohemians  — 

1  There  are,  however,  on  the  other  hand  critics  of  the  parochial  schools,  not 
only  among  Americans,  but  among  Poles. 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  341 

it  is  very  usual  to  find  part-time  supplementary  schools  for  reli- 
gious or  patriotic  instruction,  or  both.  This  would  seem  highly 
desirable  on  one  condition  —  that  the  strain  on  the  children  is 
not  too  great.  Sunday  schools  and  any  reasonable  amount  of 
vacation  schooling  seem  quite  safe,  but  it  is  easy  to  imagine  that 
such  extra  work  is  not  always  relished  by  the  children,  and  this 
is  one  more  element  of  friction  which  makes  it  difficult  to  modify 
or  delay  the  Americanizing  process. 

While  it  can  be  only  an  advantage  to  children  to  learn  their 
parents'  language,  there  can  be  no  question  that  they  should  in 
any  case  learn  English,  and  learn  it  well.  A  child  has  a  right  to 
be  furnished  with  this  key  to  success  on  precisely  the  same 
grounds  that  he  has  a  right  to  be  given  a  knowledge  of  those 
indispensable  arts,  reading  and  writing.  And  in  some  cases  the 
state,  as  guardian  of  the  rights  of  children,  may  have  to  require 
this,  just  as  it  has  to  require  universal  primary  education. 

Beyond  fulfilling  this  duty  to  the  children  growing  up  in  our 
midst,  there  should  be  no  compulsion  in  this  whole  matter,  no 
suspicion  of  coercion  or  interference,  but  a  confident  faith  in 
freedom,  a  candid  recognition  of  the  right  of  all  to  be  as  different 
as  they  please,  with  no  reserves  and  no  jealousies.  Public  libra- 
ries should  follow  the  good  example  of  Passaic  and  other  places, 
and  provide  books  in  the  language  in  which  they  will  be  read. 
The  complaints  of  Poles  in  a  certain  district  that  they  lose  their 
mail  because  postal  employees  can  speak  only  English,  should  be 
met  with  a  businesslike  and  cheerful  response  to  their  wants. 

Apart  from  the  prime  reason  that  this  is  the  just  and  friendly 
course,  any  other  breeds  ill  will  and  discord  out  of  all  proportion 
to  the  points  at  issue.  We  are  dealing  often  with  men  sore  and 
irritable  from  European  experiences.  A  panicky  desire  to  dena- 
tionalize our  immigrants  would  result  in  unspeakable  disaster,  and 
would  have  no  shadow  of  excuse.  The  process  of  change  goes 
on  too  fast  and  too  superficially  as  it  is  ;  it  needs  not  forcing,  but 
rather  guidance  toward  what  is  best  in  America. 

Language  is  not  the  only,  not  even  the  main  channel  of 
influence.  The  example  of  personal  conduct  is  even  more  effec- 
tive. Biologists  show  us  by  what  natural  laws  animals  take  the 


342  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

color  of  their  environment ;  for  different  reasons,  but  as  surely, 
people  do  the  same.  Unfortunately,  from  the  nature  of  the  case 
the  immigrant  generally  begins  at  the  bottom.  His  helplessness 
makes  him  sought  for  as  prey  by  sharpers  and  grafters  ;  it  is  all 
that  the  immigration  officials  can  do  to  keep  them  off  as  he 
lands.  As  soon  as  he  leaves  the  paternal  care  of  Ellis  Island 
they  attack  in  force.  Boarding-house  runners,  shady  employment 
agents,  sellers  of  shoddy  wares,  extortionate  hack  drivers  and 
expressmen  beset  his  way.  One  hears  all  sorts  of  stories  of  abuses 
from  both  Americans  and  Slavs  —  of  bosses  -who  take  bribes  to 
give  employment  or  to  assign  good  chambers  in  the  mine,  of  ill 
usage  at  the  hands  of  those  who  should  be  officers  of  justice,  of 
arrests  for  the  sake  of  fees,1  of  unjust  fines,  of  excessive  costs 
paid  rather  than  incur  a  greater  expense. 

The  suffering  and  loss  are  less  serious  —  bad  as  they  are  — 
than  the   evil  lesson.     In  school  the  boy  who  has  been  cruelly 
hazed  is  apt  to  be  cruel  to  the  next  crop  of  victims,  and  in  the 
same  way  fraud  and  harshness  tend  to  reproduce  themselves  in 
the  larger  world. 

But  it  is  not  only  direct  ill  treatment  that  is  a  peril ;  the 
economic  pressure  and  low  standards  of  our  lowest  industrial 
strata  are  in  themselves  disastrous. 

My  people  do  not  live  in  America,  they  live  underneath 
America.  America  goes  on  over  their  heads.  America  does  not 
begin  till  a  man  is  a  workingman,  till  he  is  earning  two  dollars 
a  day.  A  laborer  cannot  afford  to  be  an  American." 

These  words,  which  were  said  to  be  by  one  of  the  wisest  Slav 
leaders  that  I  have  ever  met,  have  rung  in  my  mind  during  all 
the  five  years  since  he  spoke  them.2  Beginning  at  the  bottom, 
"living  not  in  America  but  underneath  America,"  means  living 

1  See  Report  of  the  Commission  on  Immigration  of  the  State  of  New  York,  1909, 
especially  pp.  54-61.    See  also  II.  V.  Blaxter,  "The  Aldermen  and  their  Courts," 
Charities  and  the  Commons,  Vol.  XXI  (February  6,  1909),  pp.  851-858,  and  Koukol, 
"  The  Slav's  a  Man  for  A'  That,"  ibid.,  pp.  589-598. 

2  Father  Paul  Tymkevich,  a  Ruthenian  Greek  Catholic  priest  of  Vonkers.    Had 
he  been  spared,  he  could  have  helped  his  countrymen  and  us.    See  "  A  Shepherd 
of  Immigrants,"  for  some  account  of  his  work.    Charities,  Vol.  XIII  (December, 
1909),  pp.  193-194. 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  343 

among  the  worst  surroundings  that  the  country  has  to  show,  worse, 
often,  than  the  public  would  tolerate,  except  that  "  only  foreign- 
ers "  are  affected.  Yet  to  foreigners  they  are  doubly  injurious 
because,  coming  as  they  often  do,  with  low  home  standards,  but 
susceptible,  eager,  and  apt  to  take  what  they  find  as  the  American 
idea  of  what  ought  to  be,  they  are  likely  to  accept  and  adopt  as 
"all  right"  whatever  they  tumble  into. 

The  intoxication  of  the  change  from  homes  where  there  is  no 
money  to  be  made  and  no  chance  for  any  sort  of  advancement, 
to  the  boundless  financial  opportunities  (or  what  appear  such)  of 
America,  often  results  in  a  moral  degeneration.  Too  often  the 
educated  immigrant  has  been  imbued  by  what  he  has  read  before 
coming  here  with  the  idea  that  America  is  "the  land  of  the 
almighty  dollar,"  and  arrives  neither  expecting  nor  desiring  any- 
thing else  of  the  country  than  the  opportunity  to  get  as  rich  as 
possible.  It  is  a  tragi-comedy  to  see  at  once  the  native  American 
upbraiding  the  newcomer  with  having  come  here  solely  to  make 
money  (while  he  himself,  very  likely,  is  living  in  a  town  which 
he  has  chosen  purely  for  the  same  reason,  and  which  he  makes 
no  effort  to  serve),  and  the  newcomer,  making  no  move  to  get 
into  touch  with  American  strivings  toward  ideals,  proclaiming  to 
everyone  that  America  is  a  country  where  no  one  cares  for 
anything  but  material  success. 

What  then  ought  we  to  be  doing  for  these  strangers  in  our 
midst?  If  we  ought  not  to  try  to  "Americanize"  them,  have  we 
no  obligations  toward  them  at  all  ? 

It  is  obviously  our  plain  duty  to  give  the  immigrant  (and  every- 
one else)  fair  treatment  and  honest  government,  and  to  maintain 
conditions  making  wholesome,  decent  living  possible.  This  is  the 
minimum  required  at  our  hands,  not  by  the  Golden  Rule  —  that 
asks  much  more — -but  by  the  most  elementary  ethic  of  civiliza- 
tion. Yet  as  a  matter  of  fact,  this  simple,  fundamental  thing  we 
cannot  do.  It  is  not  in  our  power. 

We  can  and  must  do  what  in  the  end  will  be  a  better  thing. 
We  must  get  our  new  neighbors  to  work  with  us  for  these  things. 
If  their  isolation  is  not  to  continue,  America  must  come  to  mean 
to  them,  not  a  rival  nationality  eager  to  make  them  forget  their 


344  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

past,  and  offering  them  material  bribes  to  induce  them  to  aban- 
don their  ideals.  We  must  learn  to  connect  our  ideals  and  theirs, 
we  must  learn,  as  Miss  Addams  has  demonstrated,  to  work 
together  with  them  for  justice,  for  humane  conditions  of  living, 
for  beauty  and  for  true,  not  merely  formal,  liberty. 

Clubs  and  classes,  libraries  and  evening  schools,  settlements, 
and,  above  all,  movements  in  which  different  classes  of  citizens 
join  to  bring  about  specific  improvements  in  government  or  in 
living  conditions,  are  of  infinite  value  as  they  conduce  to  this 
higher  unity,  in  which  we  may  preserve  every  difference  to  which 
men  cling  with  affection,  without  feeling  ourselves  any  the  less 
fellow  citizens  and  comrades. 

30.    DEMOCRACY  VERSUS   THE   MELTING  POT  — A  STUDY 
OF  AMERICAN   NATIONALITY1 

In  1776  the  mass  of  white  men  in  the  colonies  ivere  actually, 
with  respect  to  one  another,  rather  free  and  rather  equal.  I  refer, 
not  so  much  to  the  absence  of  great  differences  in  wealth,  as  to 
the  fact  that  the  whites  were  like-minded.  They  were  possessed 
of  ethnic  and  cultural  unity ;  they  were  homogeneous  with  respect 
to  ancestry  and  ideals.  Their  century-and-a-half-old  tradition  as 
Americans  was  continuous  with  their  immemorially  older  tradition 
as  Britons.  They  did  not,  until  the  economic-political  quarrel 
with  the  mother  country  arose,  regard  themselves  as  other  than 
Englishmen,  sharing  England's  dangers  and  England's  glories. 
When  the  quarrel  came  they  remembered  how  they  had  left  the 
mother  country  in  search  of  religious  liberty  for  themselves  ;  how 
they  had  left  Holland,  where  they  had  found  this  liberty,  for  fear 
of  losing  their  ethnic  and  cultural  identity,  and  what  hardships 
they  had  borne  for  the  sake  of  conserving  both  the  liberty  and 
the  identity.  Upon  these  they  grafted  that  political  liberty  the 
love  of  which  was  innate,  perhaps,  but  the  expression  of  which 
was  occasioned  by  the  economic  warfare  with  the  merchants  of 
England.  This  grafting  was  not,  of  course,  conscious.  The 

1  \\\-  Horace  M.  Kallen.    Adapted  from  the  Xution,  February  18  and  February 

25.  1915,  pp.  190-194,  217-220. 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  345 

continuity  established  itself  rather  as  a  mood  than  as  an  articulate 
idea.  The  economic  situation  was  only  an  occasion,  and  not  a 
cause.  The  cause  lay  in  the  homogeneity  of  the  people,  their 
like-mindedness,  and  in  their  self-consciousness. 

Now,  it  happens  that  the  preservation  and  development  of  any 
given  type  of  civilization  rests  upon  these  two  conditions  —  like- 
mindedness  and  self-consciousness.  Without  them  art,  literature 
—  culture  in  any  of  its  nobler  forms  —  is  impossible  :  and  colo- 
nial America  had  a  culture  —  chiefly  of  New  England  • —  but 
representative  enough  of  the  whole  British-American  life  of  the 
period.  Within  the  area  of  what  we  now  call  the  United  States 
this  life  was  not,  however,  the  only  life.  Similarly  animated 
groups  of  Frenchmen  and  Germans,  in  Louisiana  and  in  Penn- 
sylvania, regarded  themselves  as  the  cultural  peers  of  the  British, 
and  because  of  their  own  common  ancestry,  their  like-mindedness 
and  self-consciousness,  they  have  retained  a  large  measure  of 
their  individuality  and  spiritual  autonomy  to  this  day,  after 
generations  of  unrestricted  and  mobile  contact  and  a  century  of 
political  union  with  the  dominant  British  populations. 

In  the  course  of  time  the  state,  which  began  to  be  with  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  became  possessed  of  all  the  United 
States.  French  and  Germans  in  Louisiana  and  Pennsylvania 
remained  at  home  ;  but  the  descendants  of  the  British  colonists 
trekked  across  the  continent,  leaving  tiny  self-conscious  nuclei  of 
population  in  their  wake,  and  so  established  ethnic  and  cultural 
standards  for  the  whole  country.  Had  the  increase  of  these 
settlements  borne  the  same  proportion  to  the  unit  of  population 
that  it  bore  between  1810  and  1820,  the  Americans  of  British 
stock  would  have  numbered  to-day  over  100,000,000.  The  inhab- 
itants of  the  country  do  number  over  1 00,000,000  ;  but  they  are 
not  the  children  of  the  colonists  and  pioneers  :  they  are  immi- 
grants and  the  children  of  immigrants,  and  they  are  not  British, 
but  of  all  the  other  European  stocks. 

Now,  of  all  these  immigrant  peoples  the  greater  part  are 
peasants,  vastly  illiterate,  living  their  lives  at  fighting  weight, 
with  a  minimum  of  food  and  a  maximum  of  toil.  Mr.  Ross1  thinks 
1  See  E.  A.  Ross,  The  Old  World  in  the  New.  The  Century  Co.,  1914. 


346  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

that  their  coming  to  America  was  determined  by  no  spiritual  urge; 
only  the  urge  of  steamship  agencies  and  economic  need  or  greed. 
However  generally  true  this  opinion  may  be,  he  ignores,  curiously 
enough,  three  significant  and  one  notable  exception  to  it.  The 
significant  exceptions  are  the  Poles,  the  Finns,  the  Bohemians 
—  the  subjugated  Slavic  nationalities  generally.  Political  and 
religious  and  cultural  persecution  plays  no  small  role  in  the 
movement  of  the  masses  of  them.  The  notable  exception  is  the 
Jews.  The  Jews  come  far  more  with  the  attitude  of  the  earliest 

>  settlers  than  any  of  the  other  peoples  ;  for  they  more  than  any 
other  present-day  immigrant  group  are  in  flight  from  persecution 
and  disaster ;  in  search  of  economic  opportunity,  liberty  of  con- 
science, civic  rights.  They  have  settled  chiefly  in  the  Northeast, 
with  New  York  City  as  the  center  of  greatest  concentration. 
Among  them,  as  among  the  Puritans,  the  Pennsylvania  Germans, 
the  French  of  Louisiana,  self-consdfcusness  and  like-mindedness 
are  intense  and  articulate.  13 ut  they  differ  from  the  subjugated 
Slavic  peoples  in  that  the  latter  look  backward  and  forward  to 
actual,  even  if  enslaved,  homelands ;  the  Jews,  in  the  mass, 
have  thus  far  looked  to  America  as  their  homeland. 

In  sum,  when  we  consider  that  portion  of  our  population  which 
has  taken  root,  we  see  that  it  has  not  stippled  the  country  in 
small  units  of  diverse  ethnic  groups.  It  forms  rather  a  series  of 
stripes  or  layers  of  varying  sizes,  moving  east  to  west  along  the 
central  axis  of  settlement,  where  towns  are  thickest ;  i.e.,  from 
New  York  and  Philadelphia,  through  Chicago  and  St.  Louis,  to 
San  Francisco  and  Seattle.  Stippling  is  absent  even  in  the  towns, 
where  the  variety  of  population  is  generally  greater.  Probably 
90  per  cent  of  that  population  is  either  foreign-born  or  of  foreign 
stock  ;  yet  even  so,  the  towns  are  aggregations,  not  units.  Broadly 
divided  into  the  sections  inhabited  by  the  rich  and  those  inhabited 
by  the  poor,  this  economic  division  docs  not  abolish,  it  only 
crosses,  the  ethnic  one.  There  are  rich  and  poor  little  Italys, 
Irelands,  Hungarys,  Germanys,  and  rich  and  poor  Ghettos.  The 
common  city  life,  which  depends  upon  like-mindedness,  is  not 
inward,  corporate,  and  inevitable,  but  external,  inarticulate,  and 
incidental,  a  reaction  to  the  need  of  amusement  and  the  need  of 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  347 

protection,  not  the  expression  of  a  unity  of  heritage,  mentality, 
and  interest.  Politics  and  education  in  our  cities  thus  present  the 
phenomenon  of  ethnic  compromises  not  unknown  in  Austria- 
Hungary;  concessions  and  appeals  to  "the  Irish  vote,"  "the  Jew- 
ish vote,"  "the  German  vote";  compromise  school  committees 
where  members  represent  each  ethnic  action,  until,  as  in  Boston, 
one  group  grows  strong  enough  to  dominate  the  entire  situation. 

South  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line  the  cities  exhibit  a  greater 
homogeneity.  Outside  of  certain  regions  in  Texas  the  descend- 
ants of  the  native  white  stock,  often  degenerate  and  backward, 
prevail  among  the  whites,  but  the  whites  as  a  whole  constitute  a 
relatively  weaker  proportion  of  the  population.  They  live  among 
nine  million  negroes,  whose  own  mode  of  living  tends,  by  its  mere 
massiveness,  to  standardize  the  "mind"  of  the  proletarian  South 
in  speech,  manner,  and  the  other  values  of  social  organization. 

All  the  immigrants  and  their  offspring  are  in  the  way  of 
becoming  "Americanized,"  if  they  remain  in  one  place  in  the 
country  long  enough  —  say,  six  or  seven  years.  The  general 
notion,  "Americanization,"  appears  to  denote  the  adoption  of 
English  speech,  of  American  clothes  and  manners,  of  the  Amer- 
ican attitude  in  politics.  It  connotes  the  fusion  of  the  various 
bloods,  and  a  transmutation  by  "  the  miracle  of  assimilation  "  of 
Jews,  Slavs,  Poles,  Frenchmen,  Germans,  Hindus,  Scandinavians 
into  beings  similar  in  background,  tradition,  outlook,  and  spirit  to 
the  descendants  of  the  British  colonists,  the  Anglo-Saxon  stock. 
Broadly  speaking,  the  elements  of  Americanism  are  somewhat 
external,  the  effect  of  environment ;  largely  internal,  the  effect 
of  heredity.  Our  economic  individualism,  our  traditional  laissez- 
faire  policy,  is  largely  the  effect  of  environment :  where  nature 
offers  more  than  enough  wealth  to  go  round,  there  is  no  im- 
mediate need  for  regulating  distribution.  What  poverty  and 
unemployment  exist  among  us  is  the  result  of  unskilled  and 
wasteful  social  housekeeping,  not  of  any  actual  natural  barren- 
ness. And  until  the  disparity  between  our  economic  resources 
and  our  population  becomes  equalized,  so  that  the  country  shall 
attain  an  approximate  economic  equilibrium,  this  will  always  be 
the  case.  With  our  individualism  go  our  optimism  and  our  other 


348  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

"  pioneer  "  virtues  :  they  are  purely  reactions  to  our  unexploited 
natural  wealth,  and,  as  such,  moods  which  characterize  all  soci- 
eties in  which  the  relation  between  population  and  resource  is 
similar.  The  predominance  of  the  "  new  freedom "  over  the 
"  new  nationalism  is  a  potent  political  expression  of  this  rela- 
tionship, and  the  overwhelming  concern  of  both  novelties  with 
the  economic  situation  rather  than  with  the  cultural  or  spiritual  is 
a  still  stronger  one.  That  these  last  alone  justify  or  condemn 
this  or  that  economic  condition  or  program  is  a  commonplace: 
"by  their  fruits  shall  ye  know  the  soils  and  the  roots." 

The  fruits  in  this  case  are  those  of  New  England.  Eliminate 
from  our  roster  Whittier,  Longfellow,  Lowell,  Hawthorne,  Emer- 
son, Howells,  and  what  have  we  left  ?  Outstanding  are  Poe  and 
Whitman,  and  the  necromantic  mysticism  of  the  former  is  only 
a  sick-minded  version  of  the  naturalistic  mysticism  of  the  latter, 
while  the  general  mood  of  both  is  that  of  Emerson,  who  in  his 
way  expresses  the  culmination  of  that  movement  in  mysticism 
from  the  agonized  conscience  of  colonial  and  Puritan  New 
England  —  to  which  Hawthorne  gives  voice  —  to  serene  and  opti- 
mistic assurance.  In  religion  this  spirit  of  Puritan  New  England 
nonconformity  culminates  similarly  :  in  Christian  Science  when 
it  is  superstitious  and  magical ;  in  Unitarianism  when  it  is  ration- 
alistic :  in  both  cases,  over  against  the  personal  individualism, 
there  is  the  cosmic  unity.  For  New  England,  religious,  political, 
and  literary  interests  remained  coordinate  and  indivisible ;  and 
New  England  gave  the  tone  to  and  established  the  standards  for 
the  rest  of  the  American  state.  Save  for  the  very  early  political 
writers,  the  "solid  South"  remains  unexpressed,  while  the  march 
of  the  pioneer  across  the  continent  is  permanently  marked  by 
Mark  Twain  for  the  Middle  West,  and  by  Bret  Harte  for  the 
Pacific  slope.  Both  these  men  carry  something  of  the  tone  and 
spirit  of  New  England,  and  with  them  the  "  great  tradition  "  of 
America,  the  America  of  the  "  Anglo-Saxon,"  comes  to  an  end. 
There  remains  nothing  large  or  significant  that  is  unexpressed, 
and  no  unmentionecl  writer  who  is  so  completely  representative. 

The  background,  tradition,  spirit,  and  outlook  of  the  whole  of 
the  America  of  the  "Anglo-Saxon,"  then,  find  their  spiritual 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  349 

expression  in  the  New  England  school,  Poe,  Whitman,  Mark 
Twain,  Bret  Harte.  They  realize  an  individual  who  has  passed 
from  the  agonized  to  the  optimistic  conscience,  a  person  of  the 
solid  and  homely  virtues  tempered  by  mystic  certainty  of  his 
destiny,  his  election,  hence  always  ready  to  take  risks,  and  always 
willing  to  face  dangers.  From  the  agony  of  Arthur  Dimmesdale 
to  the  smug  industrial  and  social  rise  of  Silas  Lapham,  from  the 
irresponsible  kindliness  of  Huck  Finn  to  the  "  Luck  of  Roaring 
Camp,"  the  movement  is  the  same,  though  on  different  social 
levels.  In  regions  supernal  its  coordinate  is  the  movement  from 
the  God  of  Jonathan  Edwards  to  the  Oversoul  of  Emerson  and 
the  Divinity  of  Mrs.  Eddy.  It  is  summed  up  in  the  contem- 
porary representative  "average"  American  of  British  stock  —  an 
individualist,  English-speaking,  interested  in  getting  on,  kind, 
neighborly,  not  too  scrupulous  in  business,  indulgent  to  his 
women,  optimistically  devoted  to  laisscs  faire  in  economics  and 
politics,  very  respectable  in  private  life,  tending  to  liberalism  and 
mysticism  in  religion,  and  moved,  where  his  economic  interests 
are  unaffected,  by  formulas  rather  than  ideas.  He  typifies  the 
aristocracy  of  America.  From  among  his  fellows  are  recruited 
her  foremost  protagonists  in  politics,  religion,  art,  and  learning. 
He  constitutes,  in  virtue  of  being  heir  of  the  oldest  rooted  eco- 
nomic settlement  and  spiritual  tradition  of  the  white  man  in 
America,  the  measure  and  the  standard  of  Americanism  that 
the  newcomer  is  to  attain. 

Other  things  being  equal,  a  democratic  society  which  should 
be  a  realization  of  the  assumptions  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, supposing  them  to  be  true,  would  be  a  leveling  soci- 
ety such  that  all  persons  become  alike,  either  on  the  lowest  or 
the  highest  plane.  The  outcome  of  free  social  contacts  should, 
according  to  the  laws  of  imitation,  establish  "  equality  "  on  the 
highest  plane  ;  for  imitation  is  of  the  higher  by  the  lower,  so 
that  the  cut  of  a  Paris  gown  at  $1000  becomes  imitated  in 
department  stores  at  $17.50,  and  the  play  of  the  rich  becomes 
the  vice  of  the  poor.  This  process  of  leveling  up  through  imi- 
tation is  facilitated  by  the  so-called  "standardization"  of  exter- 
nals. In  these  days  of  ready-made  clothes,  factory-made  goods, 


350  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

refrigerating  plants,  it  is  almost  impossible  that  the  mass  of  the 
inhabitants  of  this  country  should  wear  other  than  uniform 
clothes,  use  other  than  uniform  furniture  or  utensils,  or  eat  any- 
thing but  the  same  kind  of  food.  In  these  days  of  rapid  transit 
and  industrial  mobility  it  must  seem  impossible  that  any  stratifi- 
cation of  population  should  be  permanent.  Hardly  anybody  seems 
to  have  been  born  where  he  lives,  or  to  live  where  he  has  been 
born.  The  teetering  of  demand  and  supply  in  industry  and  com- 
merce keeps  large  masses  of  population  constantly  mobile  ;  so 
that  many  people  no  longer  can  be  said  to  have  homes.  This 
mobility  reenforces  the  use  of  English  —  for  a  lingua  franca, 
intelligible  everywhere,  becomes  indispensable  —  by  immigrants. 
And  ideals  that  are  felt  to  belong  with  the  language  tend  to 
become  "standardized,"  widespread,  uniform,  through  the  devices 
of  the  telegraph  and  the  telephone,  the  syndication  of  "  litera- 
ture," the  cheap  newspaper  and  the  cheap  novel,  the  vaudeville 
circuit,  the  "  movie,"  and  the  star  system.  Even  more  signifi- 
cantly, mobility  leads  to  the  propinquity  of  the  different  stocks, 
thus  promoting  intermarriage  and  pointing  to  the  coming  of  a 
new  "American  race"  —a  blend  of  at  least  all  the  European 
stocks  (for  there  seems  to  be  some  difference  of  opinion  as  to 
whether  negroes  also  should  constitute  an  element  in  this  blend) 
into  a  newer  and  better  being  whose  qualities  and  ideals  shall  be 
the  qualities  and  ideals  of  the  contemporary  American  of  British 
ancestry.  Apart  from  the  unintentional  impulsion  towards  this 
end,  of  the  conditions  I  have  just  enumerated,  there  exists  the 
instrument  especially  devised  for  this  purpose  which  we  call  the 
public  school  —  and  to  some  extent  there  is  the  state  university. 
That  the  end  has  been  and  is  being  attained,  we  have  the  bio- 
graphical testimony  of  Jacob  Riis,  of  Steiner,  and  of  Mary  Antin 
—  a  Dane  and  two  Jews,  intermarried,  assimilated  even  in  reli- 
gion, and  more  excessively  and  self-consciously  American  than 
the  Americans.  And  another  Jew,  Mr.  Israel  Zangwill,  of  Lon- 
don, profitably  promulgates  it  as  a  principle  and  an  aspiration,  to 
the  admiring  approval  of  American  audiences,  under  the  device, 
"  the  melting  pot." 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  351 

All  is  not,  however,  fact,  because  it  is  hope  ;  nor  is  the  biography 
of  an  individual,  particularly  of  a  literary  individual,  the  history 
of  a  group.  The  Riises  and  Steiners  and  Antins  protest  too  much, 
they  are  too  self-conscious  and  self -centered,  their  "Americani- 
zation "  appears  too  much  like  an  achievement,  a  tour  de  force, 
too  little  like  a  growth.  As  for  Zangwill,  at  best  he  is  the  obverse 
of  Dickens,  at  worst  he  is  a  Jew  making  a  special  plea.  It  is  the 
work  of  the  Americanized  writers  that  is  really  significant,  and  in 
that  one  senses,  underneath  the  excellent  writing,  a  dualism  and 
the  strain  to  overcome  it.  The  same  dualism  is  apparent  in  dif- 
ferent form  among  the  Americans,  and  the  strain  to  overcome  it 
seems  even  stronger.  These  appear  to  have  been  most  explicit 
at  the  high-water  marks  of  periods  of  immigration  :  the  Know- 
Nothing  party  was  one  early  expression  of  it ;  the  organization, 
in  the  '8o's,  of  the  patriotic  societies  —  the  Sons  and  the  Daugh- 
ters of  the  American  Revolution,  later  on  of  the  Colonial  Dames, 
and  so  on  —  another.  Since  the  Spanish  War  it  has  shown  itself 
in  the  continual,  if  uneven,  growth  of  the  political  conscience, 
first  as  a  muckraking  magazine  propaganda,  then  as  a  nation-wide 
attack  on  the  corruption  of  politics  by  plutocracy,  finally  as  the 
.altogether  respectable  and  evangelical  Progressive  party,  with  its 
slogan  of  "  Human  rights  against  property  rights." 

In  this  process,  however,  the  non-British  American  or  Conti- 
nental immigrant  has  not  been  a  fundamental  protagonist.  He 
has  been  an  occasion  rather  than  a  force.  What  has  been  causal 
has  been  "American."  Consider  the  personnel  and  history  of  the 
Progressive  party  by  way  of  demonstration  :  it  is  composed  largely 
of  the  professional  groups  and  of  the  "solid"  and  "upper" 
middle  class ;  as  a  spirit  it  has  survived  in  Kansas,  which  by  an 
historic  accident  happens  to  be  the  one  Middle  Western  State 
predominantly  Yankee ;  as  a  victorious  party  it  has  survived  in 
California,  one  of  the  few  States  outstandingly  "American  "  in 
population.  What  is  significant  in  it,  as  in  every  other  form  of 
the  political  conscience,  is  the  fact  that  it  is  a  response  to  a  feel- 
ing of  "  something  out  of  gear,"  and  naturally  the  attention  seeks 
the  cause,  first  of  all,  outside  of  the  self,  not  within.  Hence  the 


352  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

interest  in  economico-political  reconstruction.  But  the  maladjust- 
ment in  that  region  is  really  external.  And  the  political  con- 
science is  seeking  by  a  mere  change  in  outward  condition  to 
abolish  an  inward  disparity.  "  Human  rights  versus  property 
rights  "  is  merely  the  modern  version  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, still  assuming  that  men  are  men  merely,  as  like  as 
marbles  and  destined  under  uniformity  of  conditions  to  uniformity 
of  spirit.  The  course  of  our  economic  history  since  the  Civil  War 
shows  aptly  enough  how  shrewd  were,  other  things  being  equal, 
Marx's  generalizations  concerning  the  tendencies  of  capital 
towards  concentration  in  the  hands  of  a  few.  Attention  conse- 
quently has  fixed  itself  more  and  more  upon  the  equalization  of 
the  distribution  of  wealth  —  not  socialistically,  of  course.  And 
this  would  really  abolish  the  dualism  if  the  economic  dualism  of 
rich  and  poor  were  the  fundamental  one.  It  happens  merely 
that  it  is  n't. 

The  Anglo-Saxon  American,  constituting  as  he  does  the  eco- 
nomic upper  class,  would  hardly  have  reacted  to  economic  disparity 
as  he  has  if  that  had  been  the  only  disparity.  In  point  of  fact,  it 
is  the  ethnic  disparity  that  troubles  him.  His  activity  as  entre- 
preneur has  crowded  our  cities  with  progressively  cheaper  laborers 
of  Continental  stock,  all  consecrated  to  the  industrial  machine,  and 
towns  like  Gary,  Lawrence,  Chicago,  Pittsburgh,  have  become  in- 
dustrial camps  of  foreign  mercenaries.  His  undertakings  have 
brought  into  being  the  terrible  autocracies  of  Pullman  and  of  Lead, 
South  Dakota.  They  have  created  a  mass  of  casual  laborers 
numbering  5,000,000,  and  of  work-children  to  the  number  of 
1,500,000  (the  latter  chiefly  in  the  South,  where  the  purely 
"American"  white  predominates).  They  have  done  all  this  be- 
cause the  greed  of  the  entrepreneur  has  displaced  high-demanding 
labor  by  cheaper  labor,  and  has  brought  into  being  the  unneces- 
sary problem  of  unemployment.  In  all  things  greed  has  set  the 
standard,  so  that  the  working  ideal  of  the  people  is  to  get  rich, 
to  live,  and  to  think  as  the  rich,  to  subordinate  government  to 
the  service  of  wealth,  making  the  actual  government  "invisible." 
Per  contra  it  has  generated  "labor  unrest,"  the  I.W.  W.,  the 
civil  war  in  Colorado. 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  353 

Because  the  great  mass  of  the  laborers  happen  to  be  of  Con- 
tinental and  not  British  ancestry,  and  because  they  are  late- 
comers, Mr.  Ross  blames  them  for  this  perversion  of  our  public 
life  and  social  ideals.  Ignoring  the  degenerate  farming  stock  of 
New  England,  the  "  poor  whites  "  of  the  South,  the  negroes,  he 
fears  the  anthropological  as  well  as  the  economic  effects  of  the 
"fusion"  of  these  Continental  Europeans  —  Slavs,  and  Italians  and 
Jews  —  with  the  native  stock,  and  grows  anxious  over  the  fate  of 
American  institutions  at  their  hands.  Nothing  could  better  illus- 
trate the  fact  that  the  dualism  is  primarily  ethnic  and  not  economic. 
Under  the  laissez-faire  policy  the  economic  process  would  have 
been  the  same,  of  whatever  race  the  rich,  and  of  whatever  race 
the  poor.  Only  race  prejudice,  primitive,  spontaneous,  and  uncon- 
scious, could  have  caused  a  trained  economist  to  ignore  the  so 
obvious  fact  that  in  a  capitalistic  industrial  society  labor  is  useless 
and  helpless  without  capital ;  that  hence  the  external  dangers  of 
immigration  are  in  the  greed  of  the  capitalist  and  the  indifference 
of  the  Government.  The  restriction  of  immigration  can  naturally 
succeed  only  with  the  restriction  of  the  entrepreneur's  greed, 
which  is  its  cause.  But  the  abolition  of  immigration  and  the 
restoration  of  the  supremacy  of  "human  rights"  over  "property 
rights  "  will  not  abolish  the  fundamental  ethnic  dualism  ;  it  may 
aggravate  it. 

The  reason  is  obvious.  That  like-mindedness  in  virtue  of  which 
men  are  as  nearly  as  is  possible  in  fact  "free  and  equal"  is  not 
primarily  the  result  of  a  constant  set  of  external  conditions.  Its 
prepotent  cause  is  an  intrinsic  similarity  which,  for  America,  has 
its  roots  in  that  ethnic  and  cultural  unity  of  which  our  funda- 
mental institutions  are  the  most  durable  expression.  Similar 
environments,  similar  occupations,  do,  of  course,  generate  simi- 
larities :  "American"  is  an  adjective  of  similarity  applied  to 
Anglo-Saxons,  Irish,  Jews,  Germans,  Italians,  and  so  on.  But 
the  similarity  is  one  of  place  and  institution,  acquired,  not  inher- 
ited, and  hence  not  transmitted.  Each  generation  has,  in  fact,  to 
become  "Americanized"  afresh,  and,  withal,  inherited  nature  has 
a  way  of  redirecting  nurture,  of  which  our  public  schools  give 
only  too  much  evidence.  If  the  inhabitants  of  the  United  States 


354  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

are  stratified  economically  as  "rich"  and  "poor,"  they  are  strati- 
fied ethnically  as  Germans,  Scandinavians,  Jews,  Irish,  and 
although  the  two  stratifications  cross  more  frequently  than  they 
are  coincident,  they  interfere  with  each  other  far  less  than  is 
hopefully  supposed.  The  history  of  the  "International"  in  recent 
years,  the  present  debacle  in  Europe,  are  indications  of  how  little 
"class  consciousness"  modifies  national  consciousness.  To  the 
dominant  nationality  in  America  nationality,  in  the  European 
sense,  has  had  no  meaning ;  for  it  had  set  the  country's  standards 
and  had  been  assimilating  others  to  itself.  Now  that  the  process 
seems  to  be  slowing  down,  it  finds  itself  confronted  with  the 
problem  of  nationality,  just  as  do  the  Irish,  the  Poles,  the  Bohe- 
mians, the  Czechs,  and  the  other  oppressed  nationalities  in 
Europe.  "We  are  submerged,"  writes  a  great  American  man  of 
letters,  who  has  better  than  anyone  I  know  interpreted  the  Amer- 
ican spirit  to  the  world,  "  we  are  submerged  beneath  a  conquest 
so  complete  that  the  very  name  of  us  means  something  not 
ourselves.  ...  I  feel  as  I  should  think  an  Indian  might  feel, 
in  the  face  of  ourselves  that  were." 

The  fact  is  that  similarity  of  class  rests  upon  no  inevitable  ex- 
ternal condition,  while  similarity  of  nationality  is  inevitably  intrinsic. 
Hence  the  poor  of  two  different  peoples  tend  to  be  less  like- 
minded  than  the  poor  and  the  rich  of  the  same  peoples.  At  his 
core  no  human  being,  even  in  "a  state  of  nature,"  is  a  mere 
mathematical  unit  of  action  like  the  "economic  man."  Behind 
him  in  time,  and  tremendously  in  him  in  quality,  are  his  ancestors  ; 
around  him  in  space  are  his  relatives  and  kin,  looking  back  with 
him  to  a  remoter  common  ancestry.  In  all  these  he  lives  and 
moves  and  has  his  being.  They  constitute  his,  literally,  natio, 
and  in  Europe  every  inch  of  his  nonhuman  environment  wears 
the  effects  of  their  action  upon  it  and  breathes  their  spirit.  The 
America  he  comes  to,  beside  Europe,  is  nature  virgin  and  in- 
violate :  it  does  not  guide  him  with  ancestral  blazings  :  externally 
he  is  cut  off  from  the  past.  Not  so  internally :  whatever  else  he 
changes,  he  cannot  change  his  grandfather.  Moreover,  he  comes 
rarely  alone  ;  he  comes  companioned  with  his  fellow  nationals  ; 
and  he  comes  to  no  strangers,  but  to  kin  and  friend  who  have 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  355 

gone  before.  If  he  is  able  to  excel,  he  soon  achieves  a  local 
habitation.  There  he  encounters  the  native  American  to  whom 
he  is  a  Dutchman,  a  Frenchy,  a  Mick,  a  wop,  a  dago,  a  hunky, 
or  a  sheeny,  and  he  encounters  these  others  who  are  unlike  him, 
dealing  with  him  as  a  lower  and  outlandish  creature.  Then,  be 
he  even  the  rudest  and  most  primeval  peasant,  heretofore  totally 
unconscious  of  his  nationality,  of  his  categorical  difference  from 
other  men,  he  must  inevitably  become  conscious  of  it.  Thus,  in 
our  industrial  and  congested  towns,  where  there  are  real  and  large 
contacts  between  immigrant  nationalities  the  first  effect  appears 
to  be  an  intensification  of  spiritual  dissimilarities,  always  to  the 
disadvantage  of  the  dissimilarities. 

The  second  generation,  consequently,  devotes  itself  feverishly 
to  the  attainment  of  similarity.  The  older  social  tradition  is  lost 
by  attrition  or  thrown  off  for  advantage.  The  merest  externals  of 
the  new  one  are  acquired  —  via  the  public  school.  But  as  the 
public  school  imparts  it,  or  as  the  settlement  imparts  it,  it  is  not 
really  a  life,  it  is  an  abstraction,  an  arrangement  of  words.  Amer- 
ica is  a  word  :  as  an  historic  fact,  a  democratic  ideal  of  life,  it  is 
not  realized  at  all.  At  best  and  at  worst — now  that  the  captains 
of  industry  are  becoming  disturbed  by  the  mess  they  have  made, 
and  "vocational  training"  is  becoming  a  part  of  the  educational 
program  —  the  prospective  American  learns  a  trade,  acquiring 
at  his  most  impressionable  age  the  habit  of  being  a  cog  in  the 
industrial  machine.  And  this  he  learns,  moreover,  from  the  sons 
and  daughters  of  earlier  immigrants,  themselves  essentially  un- 
educated and  nearly  illiterate,  with  what  spontaneity  and  teach- 
ing power  they  have  squeezed  out  in  the  "  normal "  schools 
by  the  application  of  that  Pecksniffian  "efficiency"  press  called 
pedagogy. 

But  life,  the  expression  of  emotion  and  realization  of  desire, 
the  prospective  American  learns  from  the  yellow  press,  which 
has  set  itself  explicitly  the  task  of  appealing  to  his  capacities. 
He  learns  of  the  wealth,  the  luxuries,  the  extravagances,  and  the 
immoralities  of  specific  rich  persons.  He  learns  to  want  to  be  like 
them.  As  that  is  impossible  in  the  mass,  their  amusements  be- 
come his  crimes  or  vices.  Or  suppose  him  to  be  strong  enough 


356  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

to  emerge  from  the  proletarian  into  the  middle  class,  to  achieve 
economic  competence  and  social  respectability.  He  remains  still 
the  Slav,  the  Jew,  the  German,  or  the  Irish  citizen  of  the  Amer- 
ican commonwealth.  Again,  in  the  mass,  neither  he  nor  his 
children  nor  his  children's  children  lose  their  ethnic  individuality. 
For  marriage  is  determined  by  sexual  selection  and  by  pro- 
pinquity, and  the  larger  the  town,  the  less  the  likelihood  of 
mixed  marriage.  Although  the  gross  number  of  such  marriages 
is  greater  than  it  was  fifty  years  ago,  the  relative  proportions,  in 
terms  of  variant  units  of  population,  tend,  I  think,  to  be  signifi- 
cantly less.  As  the  stratification  of  the  towns  echoes  and  stresses 
the  stratification  of  the  country  as  a  whole,  the  likelihood  of  a  new 
"American"  race  is  remote  enough,  and  the  fear  of  it  unneces- 
sary. But  equally  remote  also  is  the  possibility  of  a  universaliza- 
tion  of  the  inwardness  of  the  old  American  life.  Only  the 
externals  succeed  in  passing  over. 

It  took  over  two  hundred  years  of  settled  life  in  one  place  for 
the  New  England  school  to  emerge,  and  it  emerged  in  a  com- 
munity in  which  like-mindedness  was  very  strong,  and  in  which 
the  whole  ethnic  group  performed  all  the  tasks,  economic  and 
social,  which  the  community  required.  How  when  ethnic  and  in- 
dustrial groups  are  coincident  ?  When  ethnic  and  social  groups 
are  coincident  ?  For  there  is  a  marked  tendency  in  this  country 
for  the  industrial  and  social  stratification  to  follow  ethnic  lines. 
The  first  comers  in  the  land  constitute  its  aristocracy,  are  its 
chief  protagonists  of  the  pride  of  blood  as  well  as  of  the  pride 
of  pelf,  its  formers  and  leaders  of  opinion,  the  standardizers  of 
its  culture.  Primacy  in  time  has  given  them  primacy  in  status, 
like  all  "  first-born,"  so  that  what  we  call  the  tradition  and  spirit 
of  America  is  theirs.  The  non-British  elements  of  the  population 
are  practically  voiceless,  but  they  are  massive,  "  barbarian  hordes," 
if  you  will,  and  the  effect,  the  unconscious  and  spontaneous  effect, 
of  their  pressure  has  been  the  throwing  back  of  the  Anglo- 
American  upon  his  ancestry  and  ancestral  ideals.  This  has  taken 
two  forms  :  (i)  the  "patriotic"  societies  —  not,  of  course,  the  Cin- 
cinnati or  the  Artillery  Company,  but  those  that  have  arisen  with 
the  great  migrations,  the  Sons  and  Daughters  of  the  American 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  357 

Revolution,  the  Colonial  Dames  ;  and  (2)  the  specific  clan  or 
tribal  organizations  consisting  of  families  looking  back  to  the 
same  colonial  ancestry  —  the  societies  of  the  descendants  of  John 
Alden,  etc.,  etc.  The  ancient  hatred  for  England  is  completely 
gone.  Wherever  possible,  the  ancestral  line  is  traced  across  the 
water  to  England ;  old  ancestral  homes  are  bought ;  and  those  of 
the  forbears  of  national  heroes  like  John  Harvard  or  George 
Washington  become  converted  into  shrines.  More  and  more  pub- 
lic emphasis  has  been  placed  upon  the  unity  of  the  English  and 
American  stock  —  the  common  interests  of  the  "Anglo-Saxon" 
nations,  and  of  "Anglo-Saxon"  civilization,  the  unity  of  the 
political,  literary,  and  social  tradition.  If  all  that  is  not  ethnic 
nationality  returned  to  consciousness,  what  is  it  ? 

Next  in  general  estimation  come  the  Germans  and  the  Irish, 
with  the  Jews  a  close  third,  although  the  position  of  the  last  in- 
volves some  abnormalities.  Then  come  the  Slavs  and  Italians 
and  other  central  and  south  Europeans ;  finally,  the  Asiatics.  The 
Germans  have  largely  a  monopoly  of  brewing  and  baking  and 
cabinetmaking.  The  Irish  shine  in  no  particular  industries  unless 
it  be  those  carried  on  by  municipalities  and  public-service  corpora- 
tions. The  Jews  mass  in  the  garment-making  industries,  tobacco 
manufacture,  and  in  the  "learned  professions."  The  Scandinavians 
appear  to  be  on  the  same  level  as  the  Jews  in  the  general  esti- 
mation, and  going  up.  They  are  farmers,  mostly,  and  outdoor 
men.  The  Slavs  are  miners,  metal  workers,  and  packers.  The 
Italians  tend  to  fall  with  the  negroes  into  the  "pick  and  shovel 
brigade."  Such  a  country-wide  and  urban  industrial  and  social 
stratification  is  no  more  likely  than  the  geographical  and  sectional 
stratification  to  facilitate  the  coming  of  the  "American  race"! 
And  as  our  political  and  "reforming"  action  is  directed  upon 
symptoms  rather  than  fundamental  causes,  the  stratification,  as 
the  country  moves  towards  the  inevitable  equilibrium  between 
wealth  and  population,  will  tend  to  grow  more  rigid  rather  than 
less.  Thus  far  the  pressure  of  immigration  alone  has  kept  the 
strata  from  hardening.  Eliminate  that,  and  we  may  be  headed 
for  a  caste  system  based  on  ethnic  diversity  and  mitigated  to  only 
a  negligible  degree  by  economic  differences. 


3$8  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

The  array  of  forces  for  and  against  that  like-mindedness  which 
is  the  stuff  and  essence  of  nationality  aligns  itself  as  follows  :  For 
it,  make  social  imitation  of  the  upper  by  the  lower  classes,  the 
facility  of  communications,  the  national  pastimes  of  baseball  and 
motion  picture,  the  mobility  of  population,  the  cheapness  of  print- 
ing, and  the  public  schools.  Against  it,  make  the  primary  ethnic 
differences  with  which  the  population  starts,  its  stratification  over 
an  enormous  extent  of  country,  its  industrial  and  economic  strati- 
fication. We  are  an  English-speaking  country,  but  in  no  intimate 
and  inevitable  way,  as  is  New  Zealand  or  Australia,  or  even  Canada. 
English  is  to  us  what  Latin  was  to  the  Roman  provinces  and  to 
the  Middle  Ages  • —  the  language  of  the  upper  and  dominant  class, 
the  vehicle  and  symbol  of  culture  :  for  the  mass  of  our  popula- 
tion it  is  a  sort  of  Esperanto  or  I  do,  a  lingua  franca  necessary 
less  in  the  spiritual  than  the  economic  contacts  of  the  daily  life. 
This  mass  is  composed  of  elementals,  peasants  —  Mr.  Ross  speaks 
of  their  menacing  American  life  with  "  peas&ntism  "  —the  .pro- 
letarian foundation  material  of  all  forms  of  civilization.  Their 
self-consciousness  as  groups  is  comparatively  weak.  This  is  a 
factor  which  favors  their  "assimilation,"  for  the  more  cultivated 
a  group  is,  the  more  it  is  aware  of  its  individuality,  and  the  less 
willing  it  is  to  surrender  that  individuality.  One  need  think  only 
of  the  Puritans  themselves,  leaving  Holland  for  fear  of  absorp- 
tion into  the  Dutch  population  ;  of  the  Creoles  and  Pennsylvania 
Germans  of  this  country,  or  of  the  Jews,  anywhere.  Peasants, 
however,  having  nothing  much  to  surrender  in  taking  over  a 
new  culture,  feel  no  necessary  break,  and  find  the  transition  easy. 
It  is  the  shock  of  confrontation  with  other  ethnic  groups  and 
the  feeling  of  aliency  that  generates  in  them  a  more  intense  self- 
consciousness,  which  then  militates  against  Americanization  in 
spirit  by  reenforcing  the  two  factors  to  which  the  spiritual  expres- 
sion of  the  proletarian  has  been  largely  confined.  These  factors 
are  language  and  religion.  Religion  is,  of  course,  no  more  a  "uni- 
versal" than  language.  The  history  of  Christianity  makes  evident 
enough  how  religion  is  modified,  even  inverted,  by  race,  place,  and 
time.  It  becomes  a  principle  of  separation,  often  the  sole  reposi- 
tory of  the  national  spirit,  almost  always  the  conservator  of  the 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  359 

national  language  and  of  the  tradition  that  is  passed  on  with  the 
language  to  succeeding  generations.  Among  immigrants,  hence, 
religion  and  language  tend  to  be  coordinate  :  a  single  expression 
of  the  spontaneous  and  instinctive  mental  life  of  the  masses,  and 
the  primary  inward  factors  making  against  assimilation. 

Anxiety  would,  I  think,  be  more  than  justified  were  it  not  that 
religion  in  these  cases  always  does  more  than  it  intends.  For  it 
conserves  the  inward  aspect  of  nationality  rather  than  mere  re- 
ligion, and  tends  to  become  the  center  of  exfoliation  of  a  higher 
type  of  personality  among  the  peasants  in  the  natural  terms  of 
their  own  natio.  This  natio,  reaching  consciousness  first  in  a 
reaction  against  America,  then  as  an  effect  of  the  competition 
with  Americanization,  assumes  spiritual  forms  other  than  religious : 
the  parochial  school,  to  hold  its  own  with  the  public  school,  gets 
secularized  while  remaining  national.  Natio  is  what  underlies  the 
vehemence  of  the  "Americanized  "  and  the  spiritual  and  political 
unrest  of  the  Americans.  It  is  the  fundamental  fact  of  American 
life  to-day,  and  in  the  light  of  it  Mr.  Wilson's  resentment  of 
the  "  hyphenated  "  American  is  both  righteous  and  pathetic.  But 
a  hyphen  attaches,  in  things  of  the  spirit,  also  to  the  "  pure " 
English  American.  His  cultural  mastery  tends  to  be  retrospec- 
tive rather  than  prospective.  At  the  present  time  there  is  no  •+ 
dominant  American  mind.  Our  spirit  is  inarticulate,  not  a  voice, 
but  a  chorus  of  many  voices,  each  singing  a  rather  different  tune. 
How  to  get  order  out  of  this  cacophony  is  the  question  for  all 
those  who  are  concerned  about  those  things  which  alone  justify 
wealth  and  power,  concerned  about  justice,  the  arts,  literature, 
philosophy,  science.  What  must,  what  shall  this  cacophony 
become  —  a  unison  or  a  harmony  ? 

For  decidedly  the  older  America,  whose  voice  and  whose  spirit  > 
was  New  England,  is  gone  beyond  recall.  Americans  still  are 
the  artists  and  thinkers  of  the  land,  but  they  work,  each  for  him- 
self, without  common  vision  or  ideals.  The  older  tradition  has 
passed  from  a  life  into  a  memory,  and  the  newer  one,  so  far  as 
it  has  an  Anglo-Saxon  base,  is  holding  its  own  beside  more  and 
more  formidable  rivals,  the  expression  in  appropriate  form  of 
the  national  inheritances  of  the  various  populations  concentrated 


360  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

in  the  various  States  of  the  Union,  populations  of  whom  their 
national  self-consciousness  is  perhaps  the  chief  spiritual  asset. 
Think  of  the  Creoles  in  the  South  and  the  French  Canadians  in 
the  North,  clinging  to  French  for  so  many  generations  and  main- 
taining, however  weakly,  spiritual  and  social  contacts  with  the 
mother  country ;  of  the  Germans,  with  their  Deutschtum,  their 
Mcinncrchorc,  Turnvercinc,  and  Sc1iiitzcnfcstc\  of  the  universally 
separate  Jews  ;  of  the  intensely  nationalistic  Irish  ;  of  the  Penn- 
sylvania Germans  ;  of  the  indomitable  Poles,  and  even  more  in- 
domitable Bohemians  ;  of  the  30,000  Belgians  in  Wisconsin,  with 
their  "Belgian"  language,  a  mixture  of  Walloon  and  Flemish 
welded  by  reaction  to  a  strange  social  environment.  Except  in 
such  cases  as  the  town  of  Lead,  South  Dakota,  the  great  ethnic 
groups, of  proletarians,  thrown  upon  themselves  in  a  new  environ- 
ment, generate  from  among  themselves  the  other  social  classes 
which  Mr.  Ross  misses  so  sadly  among  them  :  their  shopkeepers, 
their  physicians,  their  attorneys,  their  journalists,  and  their  national 
and  political  leaders,  who  form  the  links  between  them  and  the 
greater  American  society.  They  develop  their  own  literature,  or 
become  conscious  of  that  of  the  mother  country.  As  they  grow 
more  prosperous  and  "Americanized,"  as  they  become  freed  from 
the  stigma  of  "foreigner,"  they  develop  group  self-respect:  the 
"wop"  changes  into  a  proud  Italian,  the  "hunky"  into  an  in- 
tensely nationalist  Slav.  They  learn,  or  they  recall,  the  spiritual 
heritage  of  their  nationality.  Their  cultural  abjectness  gives  way 
to  cultural  pride  ;  and  the  public  schools,  the  libraries,  and  the 
clubs  become  beset  with  demands  for  texts  in  the  national 
language  and  literature. 

The  Poles  are  an  instance  worth  dwelling  upon.  There  are 
over  a  million  of  them  in  the  country,  a  backward  people,  pro- 
lific, brutal,  priest-ridden  —  a  menace  to  American  institutions. 
Yet  the  urge  that  carries  them  in  such  numbers  to  America  is 
not  unlike  that  which  carried  the  Pilgrim  Fathers.  Next  to  the 
Jews,  whom  their  brethren  in  their  Polish  home  are  hounding  to 
death,  the  unhappiest  people  in  Furope,  exploited  by  both  their 
own  upper  classes  and  the  Russian  conqueror,  they  have  resisted 
extinction  at  a  great  cost.  They  have  clung  to  their  religion 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  361 

because  it  was  a  mark  of  difference  between  them  and  their  con- 
querors ;  because  they  love  liberty,  they  have  made  their  language 
of  literary  importance  in  Europe.  Their  aspiration,  impersonal, 
disinterested,  as  it  must  be  in  America,  to  free  Poland,  to  con- 
serve the  Polish  spirit,  is  the  most  hopeful  and  American  thing 
about  them  —  the  one  thing  that  stands  actually  between  them 
and  brutalization  through  complete  economic  degradation.  It  lifts 
them  higher  than  anything  that,  in  fact,  America  offers  them. 
The  same  thing  is  true  for  the  Bohemians,  1 7,000  of  them,  work- 
ingmen  in  Chicago,  paying  a  proportion  of  their  wage  to  maintain 
schools  in  the  Bohemian  tongue  and  free  thought ;  the  same  thing 
is  true  of  many  other  groups. 

How  true  it  is  may  be  observed  from  a  comparison  of  the  ver- 
nacular dailies  and  weeklies  with  the  yellow  American  press  which 
is  concocted  expressly  for  the  great  American  masses.  The  con- 
tent of  the  former,  when  the  local  news  is  deducted,  is  a  mass 
of  information,  political,  social,  scientific  ;  often  translations  into 
the  vernacular  of  standard  English  writing,  often  original  work 
of  high  literary  quality.  The  latter,  when  the  news  is  deducted, 
consists  of  the  sporting  page  and  the  editorial  page.  Both  pander 
rather  than  awaken,  so  that  it  is  no  wonder  that  in  fact  the 
intellectual  and  spiritual  pabulum  of  the  great  masses  consists 
of  the  vernacular  papers  in  the  national  tongue.  With  them  go 
also  the  vernacular  drama,  and  the  thousand  and  one  other  phe- 
nomena which  make  a  distinctive  culture,  the  outward  expres- 
sion of  that  fundamental  like-mindedness  wherein  men  are  truly 
"free  and  equal."  This,  beginning  for  the  dumb  peasant  masses 
in  language  and  religion,  emerges  in  the  other  forms  of  life 
and  art  and  tends  to  make  smaller  or  larger  ethnic  groups 
autonomous,  self-sufficient,  and  reacting  as  spiritual  units  to 
the  residuum  of  America. 

What  is  the  cultural  outcome  likely  to  be,  under  these  con- 
ditions ?  Surely  not  the  melting  pot.  Rather  something  that 
has  become  more  and  more  distinct  in  the  changing  State  and 
city  life  of  the  last  two  decades,  and  which  is  most  articulate 
and  apparent  among  the  Scandinavians,  the  Germans,  the  Irish, 
the  Jews. 


362  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

It  is  in  the  area  where  Scandinavians  are  most  concentrated 
that  Norwegian  is  preached  on  Sunday  in  more  churches  than 
in  Norway.  That  area  is  Minnesota,  not  unlike  Scandinavia  in 
climate  and  character.  There,  if  the  newspapers  are  to  be  trusted, 
the  "foreign  language"  taught  in  an  increasingly  larger  number 
of  high  schools  is  Scandinavian.  The  Constitution  of  the  State 
resembles  in  many  respects  the  famous  Norwegian  Constitution 
of  1813.  The  largest  city  has  been  chosen  as  the  "spiritual 
capital,"  if  I  may  say  so,  the  seat  of  the  Scandinavian  "  house  of 
life,"  which  the  Scandinavian  Society  in  America  is  reported  to 
be  planning  to  build  as  a  center  from  which  there  is  to  spread 
through  the  land  Scandinavian  culture  and  ideals. 

The  eastern  neighbor  of  Minnesota  is  Wisconsin,  a  region  of 
great  concentration  of  Germans.  Is  it  merely  a  political  accident 
that  the  centralization  of  State  authority  and  control  has  been 
possible  there  to  a  degree  heretofore  unknown  in  this  country  ? 
That  the  Socialist  organization  is  the  most  powerful  in  the  land, 
able  under  ordinary  conditions  to  have  elected  the  mayor  of  a 
large  city  and  a  congressman,  and  kept  out  of  power  only  by 
coalition  of  the  other  parties  ?  That  German  is  the  overwhelm- 
ingly predominant  "  foreign  language  "  in  the  public  schools  and 
in  the  university  ?  Or  that  the  fragrance  of  Deutschtum  per- 
vades the  life  of  the  whole  State  ?  The  earliest  German  immi- 
grants to  America  were  group  conscious  to  a  high  degree.  They 
brought  with  them  a  cultural  tradition  and  political  aspiration. 
They  wanted  to  found  a  State.  If  a  State  is  to  be  regarded  as 
a  mode  of  life  of  the  mind,  they  have  succeeded.  Their  language 
is  the  predominant  "  foreign  "  one  throughout  the  Middle  West. 
The  teaching  of  it  is  required  by  law  in  many  places,  southern 
Ohio  and  Indianapolis,  for  example.  Their  national  institutions, 
even  to  cooking,  are  as  widespread  as  they  are.  They  are  organ- 
ized into  a  great  national  society,  the  German-American  Alliance, 
which  is  dedicated  to  the  advancement  of  German  culture  and 
ideals.  They  encourage  and  make  possible  a  close  and  more  inti- 
mate contact  with  the  fatherland.  They  endow  Germanic  museums, 
they  encourage  and  provide  for  exchange  professorships,  erect 
monuments  to  German  heroes,  and  disseminate  translations  of 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  363 

the  German  classics.  And  there  are,  of  course,  the  very  excellent 
German  vernacular  press,  the  German  theater,  the  German  club, 
the  German  organization  of  life. 

Similar  are  the  Irish,  living  in  strength  in  Massachusetts  and 
New  York.  When  they  began  to  come  to  this  country  they  were 
far  less  well  off  and  far  more  passionately  self-conscious  than  the 
Germans.  For  numbers  of  them  America  was  and  has  remained 
just  a  center  from  which  to  plot  for  the  freedom  of  Ireland.  For 
most  it  was  an  opportunity  to  escape  both  exploitation  and  star- 
vation. The  way  they  made  was  made  against  both  race  and  re- 
ligious prejudice  :  in  the  course  of  it  they  lost  much  that  was 
attractive  as  well  as  much  that  was  unpleasant.  But  Americani- 
zation brought  the  mass  of  them  also  spiritual  self-respect,  and 
their  growing  prosperity  both  here  and  in  Ireland  is  what  lies 
behind  the  more  inward  phases  of  Irish  Nationalism  —  the  Gaelic 
movement,  the  Irish  theater,  the  Irish  Art  Society.  I  omit  con- 
sideration of  such  organized  bodies  as  the  Ancient  Order  of  Hi- 
bernians. All  these  movements  alike  indicate  the  conversion  of 
the  negative  nationalism  of  the  hatred  of  England  to  the  positive 
nationalism  of  the  loving  care  and  development  of  the  cultural 
values  of  the  Celtic  spirit.  A  significant  phase  of  it  is  the  vot- 
ing of  Irish  history  into  the  curriculum  of  the  high  schools  of 
Boston.  In  sum,  once  the  Irish  body  had  been  fed  and  erected, 
the  Irish  mind  demanded  and  generated  its  own  peculiar  form  of 
self-realization  and  satisfaction. 

And,  finally,  the  Jews.  Their  attitude  towards  America  is  dif- 
ferent in  a  fundamental  respect  from  that  of  other  immigrant 
nationalities.  They  do  not  come  to  the  United  States  from  truly 
native  lands,  lands  of  their  proper  natio  and  culture.  They  come 
from  lands  of  sojourn,  where  they  have  been  for  ages  treated  as 
foreigners,  at  most  as  semicitizens,  subject  to  disabilities  and 
persecutions.  They  come  with  no  political  aspirations  against 
the  peace  of  other  states  such  as  move  the  Irish,  the  Poles,  the 
Bohemians.  They  come  with  the  intention  to  be  completely 
incorporated  into  the  body  politic  of  the  state.  They  alone,  as 
Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  notes,  of  all  the  immigrant  peoples  have  made 
spontaneously  conscious  and  organized  efforts  to  prepare  themselves 


364  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

and  their  brethren  for  the  responsibilities  of  American  citizenship. 
There  is  hardly  a  considerable  municipality  in  the  land,  where 
Jews  dwell,  that  has  not  its  Hebrew  Institute,  or  its  Educational 
Alliance,  or  its  Young  Men's  Hebrew  Association,  or  its  Com- 
munity House,  especially  dedicated  to  this  task.  They  show  the 
highest  percentage  of  naturalization.  Yet  of  all  self-conscious 
peoples  they  are  the  most  self-conscious.  Of  all  immigrants  they 
have  the  oldest  civilized  tradition,  they  are  longest  accustomed  to 
living  under  law,  and  are  at  the  outset  the  most  eager  and  the  most 
successful  in  eliminating  the  external  differences  between  them- 
selves and  their  social  environment.  Even  their  religion  is  flexible 
and  accommodating,  as  that  of  the  Christian  sectaries  is  not,  for 
change  involves  no  change  in  doctrine,  only  in  mode  of  life. 

Yet,  once  the  wolf  is  driven  from  the  door  and  the  Jewish  im- 
migrant takes  his  place  in  our  society  a  free  man  and  an  Ameri- 
can, he  tends  to  become  all  the  more  a  Jew.  The  cultural  unity 
of  his  race,  history,  and  background  is  only  continued  by  the  new 
life  under  the  new  conditions.  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  calls  the  Jewish 
quarter  in  New  York  a  city  within  a  city,  and  with  more  justice 
than  other  quarters  because,  although  it  is  far  more  in  tune  with 
Americanism  than  the  other  quarters,  it  is  also  far  more  autono- 
mous in  spirit  and  self-conscious  in  culture.  It  has  its  sectaries, 
its  radicals,  its  artists,  its  literati ;  its  press,  its  literature,  its 
theater,  its  Yiddish  and  its  Hebrew,  its  Talmudical  colleges  and 
its  Hebrew  schools,  its  charities  and  its  vanities,  and  its  coordinat- 
ing organization,  the  Kehilla,  all  more  or  less  duplicated  wherever 
Jews  congregate  in  mass.  Here  not  religion  alone,  but  the  whole 
world  of  radical  thinking,  carries  the  mother  tongue  and  the 
father  tongue,  with  all  that  they  imply.  Unlike  the  parochial 
schools,  their  separate  schools,  being  national,  do  not  displace  the 
public  schools  ;  they  supplement  the  public  schools.  The  Jewish 
ardor  for  pure  learning  is  notorious.  And,  again,  as  was  the  case 
with  the  Scandinavians,  the  Germans,  the  Irish,  democracy  applied 
to  education  has  given  the  Jews  their  will  that  Hebrew  shall  be 
coordinate  with  French  and  German  in  the  regent's  examination. 
On  a  national  scale  of  organization  there  is  the  American  Jewish 
Committee,  the  Jewish  Historical  Society,  the  Jewish  Publication 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  365 

Society.  Rurally,  there  is  the  model  Association  of  Jewish  Farmers, 
with  their  cooperative  organization  for  agriculture  and  for  agricul- 
tural education.  In  sum,  the  most  eagerly  American  of  the  im- 
migrant groups  are  also  the  most  autonomous  and  self-conscious 
in  spirit  and  culture. 

Immigrants  appear  to  pass  through  four  phases  in  the  course 
of  being  Americanized.  In  the  first  phase  they  exhibit  economic 
eagerness,  the  greed  of  the  unfed.  Since  external  differences  are 
a  handicap  in  the  economic  struggle,  they  "  assimilate,"  seeking 
thus  to  facilitate  the  attainment  of  economic  independence.  Once 
the  proletarian  level  of  such  independence  is  reached,  the  process 
of  assimilation  slows  down  and  tends  to  come  to  a  stop.  The 
immigrant  group  is  still  a  national  group,  modified,  sometimes 
improved,  by  environmental  influences,  but  otherwise  a  solitary 
spiritual  unit,  which  is  seeking  to  find  its  way  out  on  its  own 
social  level.  This  search  brings  to  light  permanent  group  dis- 
tinctions, and  the  immigrant,  like  the  Anglo-Saxon  American,  is 
thrown  back  upon  himself  .and  his  ancestry.  Then  a  process  of 
dissimilation  begins.  The  arts,  life,  and  ideals  of  the  nationality 
become  central  and  paramount ;  ethnic  and  national  differences 
change  in  status  from  disadvantages  to  distinctions.  All  the  while 
the  immigrant  has  been  using  the  English  language  and  behav- 
ing like  an  American  in  matters  economic  and  political,  and  con- 
tinues to  do  so.  The  institutions  of  the  Republic  have  become 
the  liberating  cause  and  the  background  for  the  rise  of  the  cul- 
tural consciousness  and  social  autonomy  of  the  immigrant  Irish- 
man, German,  Scandinavian,  Jew,  Pole,  or  Bohemian.  On  the 
whole,  Americanization  has  not  repressed  nationality.  Americani- 
zation has  liberated  nationality. 

Hence  what  troubles  so  many  Anglo-Saxon  Americans  is  not 
really  inequality ;  what  troubles  them  is  difference.  Only  things 
that  are  alike  in  fact  and  not  abstractly,  and  only  men  that  arc 
alike  in  origin  and  in  spirit  and  not  abstractly,  can  be  truly  "  equal  " 
and  maintain  that  inward  unanimity  of  action  and  outlook  which 
make  a  national  life.  The  writers  of  the  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence and  of  the  Constitution  were  not  confronted  by  the  prac- 
tical fact  of  ethnic  dissimilarity  among  the  whites  of  the  country. 


366  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Their  descendants  are  confronted  by  it.  Its  existence,  acceptance, 
and  development  provide  one  of  the  inevitable  consequences  of 
the  democratic  principle  on  which  our  theory  of  government  is 
based,  and  the  result  at  the  present  writing  is  to  many  worthies 
very  unpleasant.  Democratism  and  the  federal  principle  have 
worked  together  with  economic  greed  and  ethnic  snobbishness 
to  people  the  land  with  all  the  nationalities  of  Europe,  and  to 
convert  the  early  American  nation  into  the  present  American 
state.  For  in  effect  we  are  in  the  process  of  becoming  a  true 
federal  state,  such  a  state  as  men  hope  for  as  the  outcome  of  the 
European  War,  a  great  republic  consisting  of  a  federation  or 
commonwealth  of  nationalities. 

Given,  in  the  economic  order,  the  principle  of  laissez  fairc 
applied  to  a  capitalistic  society,  in  contrast  with  the  manorial 
and  guild  systems  of  the  past  and  the  Socialist  Utopias  of  the 
future,  the  economic  consequences  are  the  same,  whether  in 
America,  full  of  all  Europe,  or  in  England,  full  of  the  English, 
Scotch,  and  Welsh.  Given,  in  the  political  order,  the  princi- 
ple that  all  men  are  equal  and  that  each,  consequently,  under  the 
law  at  least,  shall  have  the  opportunity  to  make  the  most  of  him- 
self, the  control  of  the  machinery  of  government  by  the  plutoc- 
racy is  a  foregone  conclusion.  Laissez  fairc  and  unprecedentedly 
bountiful  natural  resources  have  turned  the  mind  of  the  state  to 
wealth  alone,  and  in  the  haste  to  accumulate  wealth  considerations 
of  human  quality  have  been  neglected  and  forgotten,  the  action 
of  government  has  been  remedial  rather  than  constructive,  and 
Mr.  Ross's  "  peasantism,"  i.e.,  the  growth  of  an  expropriated, 
degraded  industrial  class,  dependent  on  the  factory  rather  than  on 
land,  has  been  rapid  and  vexatious. 

The  problems  which  these  conditions  give  rise  to  are  important, 
but  not  primarily  important.  Although  they  have  occupied  the 
minds  of  all  our  political  theorists,  they  are  problems  of  means, 
of  instruments,  not  of  ends.  They  concern  the  conditions  of  life, 
not  the  kind  of  life,  and  there  appears  to  have  been  a  general 
assumption  that  only  one  kind  of  human  life  is  possible  in 
America.  But  the  same  democracy  which  underlies  the  evils  of 
the  economic  order  underlies  also  the  evils  —  and  the  promise  — 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  367 

of  the  ethnic  order.  Because  no  individual  is  merely  an  individ- 
ual, the  political  autonomy  of  the  individual  has  meant  and  is 
beginning  to  realize  in  these  United  States  the  spiritual  autonomy 
of  his  group.  The  process  is  as  yet  far  from  fruition.  We  are, 
in  fact,  at  the  parting  of  the  ways.  A  genuine  social  alternative 
is  before  us,  either  of  which  parts  we  may  realize  if  we  will.  In 
social  construction  the  will  is  father  to  the  fact,  for  the  fact  is 
nothing  more  than  the  concord  or  conflict  of  wills.  What  do  we 
will  to  make  of  the  United  States  —  a  unison,  singing  the  old 
Anglo-Saxon  theme  "  America,"  the  America  of  the  New  England 
school,  or  a  harmony,  in  which  that  theme  shall  be  dominant, 
perhaps,  among  others,  but  one  among  many,  not  the  only  one  ? 
The  mind  reverts  helplessly  to  the  historic  attempts  at  unison 
in  Europe  —  the  heroic  failure  of  the  pan-Hellenists,  of  the 
Romans,  the  disintegration  and  the  diversification  of  the  Christian  r- 
Church,  for  a  time  the  most  successful  unison  in  history ;  the 
present-day  failures  of  Germany  and  of  Russia.  Here,  however, 
the  whole  social  situation  is  favorable,  as  it  has  never  been  at  any 
time  elsewhere  —  everything  is  favorable  but  the  basic  law  of 
America  itself,  and  the  spirit  of  American  institutions.  To 
achieve  unison  —  it  can  be  achieved  —  would  be  to  violate  these. 
For  the  end  determines  the  means,  and  this  end  would  involve 
no  other  means  than  those  used  by  Germany  in  Poland,  in 
Schleswig-Holstein,  and  in  Alsace-Lorraine;  by  Russia  in  the 
Pale,  in  Poland,  in  Finland.  Fundamentally  it  would  require  the 
complete  nationalization  of  education,  the  abolition  of  every  form 
of  parochial  and  private  school,  the  abolition  of  instruction  in  other 
tongues  than  English,  and  the  concentration  of  the  teaching  of 
history  and  literature  upon  the  English  tradition.  The  other  insti- 
tutions of  society  would  require  treatment  analogous  to  that 
administered  by  Germany  to  her  European  acquisitions.  And  all 
of  this,  even  if  meeting  with  no  resistance,  would  not  completely 
guarantee  the  survival  as  a  unison  of  the  older  Americanism.  For 
the  program  would  be  applied  to  diverse  ethnic  types,  and  the 
reconstruction  that,  with  the  best  will,  they  might  spontaneously 
make  of  the  tradition  would  more  likely  than  not  be  a  far  cry 
from  the  original.  It  is,  already. 


368  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

The  notion  that  the  program  might  be  realized  by  radical 
and  even  enforced  miscegenation,  by  the  creation  of  the  melting 
pot  by  law,  and  thus  by  the  development  of  the  new  "American 
race,"  is,  as  Mr.  Ross  points  out,  as  mystically  optimistic  as  it  is 
ignorant.  In  historic  times,  so  far  as  we  know,  no  new  ethnic 
types  have  originated,  and  what  we  know  of  breeding  gives  us 
no  assurance  of  the  disappearance  of  the  old  types  in  favor  of  the 
new,  only  the  addition  of  a  new  type,  if  it  succeeds  in  surviving, 
to  the  already  existing  older  ones.  Biologically,  life  does  not  unify  ; 
biologically,  life  diversifies  ;  and  it  is  sheer  ignorance  to  apply  social 
analogies  to  biological  processes.  In  any  event  we  know  what  the 
qualities  and  capacities  of  existing  types  are  ;  we  know  how  by 
education  to  do  something  towards  the  repression  of  what  is  evil 
in  them  and  the  conservation  of  what  is  good.  The  "American 
race "  is  a  totally  unknown  thing ;  to  presume  that  it  will  be 
better  because  (if  we  like  to  persist  in  the  illusion  that  it  is  com- 
ing) it  will  be  later,  is  no  different  from  imagining  that,  because 
contemporary,  Russia  is  better  than  ancient  Greece.  There  is 
nothing  more  to  be  said  to  the  pious  stupidity  that  identifies 
recency  with  goodness.  The  unison  to  be  achieved  cannot  be 
a  unison  of  ethnic  types.  It  must  be,  if  it  is  to  be  at  all,  a 
unison  of  social  and  historic  interests,  established  by  the  complete 
cutting  off  of  the  ancestral  memories  of  our  populations,  the 
enforced,  exclusive  use  of  the  English  language  and  English  and 
American  history  in  the  schools  and  in  the  daily  life. 

The  attainment  of  the  other  alternative,  a  harmony,  also 
requires  concerted  public  action.  But  the  action  would  do  no 
violence  to  our  fundamental  law  and  the  spirit  of  our  institutions, 
nor  to  the  qualities  of  men.  It  would  seek  simply  to  eliminate 
the  waste  and  the  stupidity  of  our  social  organization,  by  way  of 
freeing  and  strengthening  the  strong  forces  actually  in  operation. 
Starting  with  our  existing  ethnic  and  cultural  groups,  it  would  seek 
to  provide  conditions  under  which  each  may  attain  the  perfection 
that  is  proper  to  its  kind.  The  provision  of  such  conditions  is 
the  primary  intent  of  our  fundamental  law  and  the  function  of  our 
institutions.  And  the  various  nationalities  which  compose  our 
commonwealth  must  learn  first  of  all  this  fact,  which  is  perhaps, 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  369 

to  most  minds,  the  outstanding  ideal  content  of  "  Americanism  " 
—  that  democracy  means  self-realization  through  self-control,  self- 
government,  and  that  one  is  impossible  without  the  other.  For 
the  application  of  this  principle,  which  is  realized  in  a  harmony 
of  societies,  there  are  European  analogies  also.  I  omit  Austria 
and  Turkey,  for  the  union  of  nationalities  is  there  based  more  on 
inadequate  force  than  on  consent,  and  the  form  of  their  organi- 
zation is  alien  to  ours.  I  think  of  England  and  of  Switzerland. 
England  is  a  state  of  four  nationalities  —  the  English,  Welsh,  *>• 
Scotch,  and  Irish  (if  one  considers  the  Empire,  of  many  more), 
and  while  English  history  is  not  unmarred  by  attempts  at  unison, 
both  the  home  policy  and  the  imperial  policy  have,  since  the 
Boer  War,  been  realized  more  and  more  in  the  application  of  the 
principle  of  harmony  :  the  strength  of  the  kingdom  and  the  empire 
have  been  posited  more  and  more  upon  the  voluntary  autonomous 
cooperation  of  the  component  nationalities.  Switzerland  is  a  state 
of  three  nationalities,  a  republic  as  the  United  States  is,  far  more 
democratically  governed,  concentrated  in  an  area  not  much  different 
in  size,  I  suspect,  from  New  York  City,  with  a  population  not 
far  from  it  in  total.  Yet  Switzerland  has  the  most  loyal  citizens 
in  Europe.  Their  language,  literary  and  spiritual  traditions  are 
on  the  one  side  German,  on  another  Italian,  on  a  third  side  «s 
French.  And  in  terms  of  social  organization,  of  economic  pros- 
perity, of  public  education,  of  the  general  level  of  culture,  Switzer- 
land is  the  most  successful  democracy  in  the  world.  It  conserves 
and  encourages  individuality. 

The  reason  lies,  I  think,  in  the  fact  that  in  Switzerland  the 
conception  of  "natural  rights"  operates,  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously, as  a  generalization  from  the  unalterable  data  of  human 
nature.  What  is  inalienable  in  the  life  of  mankind  is  its  intrinsic 
positive  quality  —  its  psychophysical  inheritance.  Men  may  change 
their  clothes,  their  politics,  their  wives,  their  religions,  their  phi- 
losophies, to  a  greater  or  less  extent :  they  cannot  change  their 
grandfathers.  Jews  or  Poles  or  Anglo-Saxons,  in  order  to  cease 
being  Jews  or  Poles  or  Anglo-Saxons,  would  have  to  cease  to  be. 
The  selfhood  which  is  inalienable  in  them,  and  for  the  realiza- 
tion of  which  they  require  "  inalienable  "  liberty,  is  ancestrally 


370  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

determined,  and  the  happiness  which  they  pursue  has  its  form 
implied  in  ancestral  endowment.  This  is  what,  actually,  democ- 
racy in  operation  assumes.  There  are  human  capacities  which  it  is 
the  function  of  the  state  to  liberate  and  to  protect ;  and  the  failure 
of  the  state  as  a  government  means  its  abolition.  Government, 
the  state,  under  the  democratic  conception  is  merely  an  instru- 
ment, not  an  end.  That  it  is  often  an  abused  instrument,  that  it 
is  often  seized  by  the  powers  that  prey,  that  it  makes  frequent 
mistakes  and  considers  only  secondary  ends,  surface  needs,  which 
vary  from  moment  to  moment,  is,  of  course,  obvious  :  hence  our 
social  and  political  chaos.  But  that  it  is  an  instrument,  flexibly 
adjustable  to  changing  life,  changing  opinion,  and  needs,  our  whole 
electoral  organization  and  party  system  declare.  And  as  intelli- 
gence and  wisdom  prevail  over  "  politics  "  and  special  interests, 
as  the  steady  and  continuous  pressure  of  the  inalienable  qualities 
and  purposes  of  human  groups  more  and  more  dominate  the 
confusion  of  our  common  life,  the  outlines  of  a  possible  great 
and  truly  democratic  commonwealth  become  discernible. 

Its  form  is  that  of  the  federal  republic ;  its  substance  a 
democracy  of  nationalities,  cooperating  voluntarily  and  autono- 
mously in  the  enterprise  of  self-realization  through  the  perfection 
of  men  according  to  their  kind.  The  common  language  of  the 
commonwealth,  the  language  of  its  great  political  tradition,  is 
English,  but  each  nationality  expresses  its  emotional  and  volun- 
tary life  in  its  own  language,  in  its  own  inevitable  aesthetic  and 
intellectual  forms.  The  common  life  of  the  commonwealth  is 
politico-economic,  and  serves  as  the  foundation  and  background 
for  the  realization  of  the  distinctive  individuality  of  each  natio 
that  composes  it.  Thus  "  American  civilization  "  may  come  to 
mean  the  perfection  of  the  cooperative  harmonies  of  "  European 
civilization,"  the  waste,  the  squalor,  and  the  distress  of  Europe 
being  eliminated  —  a  multiplicity  in  a  unity,  an  orchestration  of 
mankind.  As  in  an  orchestra,  every  type  of  instrument  has  its 
specific  timbre  and  tonality,  founded  in  its  substance  and  form  ; 
as  every  type  has  its  appropriate  theme  and  melody  in  the  whole 
symphony,  so  in  society  each  ethnic  group  is  the  natural  instru- 
ment, its  spirit  and  culture  are  its  theme  and  melody,  and  the 


ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  371 

harmony  and  dissonances  and  discords  of  them  all  make  the 
symphony  of  civilization,  with  this  difference  :  a  musical  sym- 
phony is  written  before  it  is  played  ;  in  the  symphony  of  civiliza- 
tion the  playing  is  the  writing,  so  that  there  is  nothing  so  fixed 
and  inevitable  about  its  progressions  as  in  music,  so  that  within 
the  limits  set  by  nature  they  may  vary  at  will,  and  the  range  and 
variety  of  the  harmonies  may  become  wider  and  richer  and  more 
beautiful. 

But  the  question  is,  Do  the  dominant  classes  in  America  want 
such  a  society  ? 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  REGULATION  AND  RESTRICTION  OF  IMMIGRATION 

The  main  provisions  of  the  Immigration  Act  of  1907,  as  amended  in  1910,  373. — 
Recommendations  of  the  United  States  Immigration  Commission,  382.  —  The 
case  for  restrictive  legislation,  387.  —  Possible  remedies,  389. —  Government  con- 
trol of  distribution,  391. —  Requirement  of  passports  for  admission,  391. —  Aboli- 
tion of  the  contract-labor  clause,  392. —  Restriction  of  the  number  of  unskilled 
admitted,  394. —  Some  fallacies,  395. — Argument  against  restriction,  401. — Presi- 
dent Wilson's  veto  of  the  literacy  test,  405.  —  The  problem  of  Oriental  immigra- 
tion, 409.- — The  ethical  aspects  of  regulation,  419 

[The  conflict  between  the  restrictionists  and  the  anti-restriction- 
ists  has  been  fought  in  and  out  of  Congress  for  many  years. 
The  Immigration  Act  of  1907,  which,  as  amended  in  1910  to 
prevent  more  effectively  the  importation  of  aliens  for  immoral 
purposes  and  to  secure  the  deportation  and  punishment  of  aliens 
who  profit  by  prostitution,  constitutes  the  present  immigration 
law,  was  a  slight  victory  for  the  restrictionists,  as  it  made  certain 
additions  to  the  excluded  classes  and  otherwise  provided  for  more 
stringent  regulation.  It  also  provided  for  a  Congressional  Immi- 
gration Commission,  to  make  an  exhaustive  study  of  the  whole 
problem.  The  Report  of  this  Commission,  from  which  several 
selections  are  reprinted  in  this  volume,  is  a  mine  of  information, 
unfortunately  in  large  part  ill-digested,  upon  nearly  every  aspect 
of  immigration  and  especially  upon  the  fundamentally  important 
industrial  and  economic  phases  of  the  situation.  The  Commission 
as  a  result  of  its  investigations  declared  its  belief  in  the  desir- 
ability of  restrictive  legislation  and  advocated  the  literacy  test  as 
"  the  most  feasible  single  method  "  of  restriction.  It  is  upon  this 
specific  method  that  the  struggle  is  now  centered,  although  the 
opponents  to  the  literacy  test  are  also  to  a  great  extent  opposed 
to  restriction  in  any  form.  The  literacy  tes-t  was  passed  by  Con- 
gress in  1897,  but  the  bill  was  vetoed  by  President  Cleveland.1 
1  See  his  veto  message,  54th  Cong.,  2d  Session,  Sen.  Doc.  Xo.  185. 

372 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  373 

Early  in  1913,  Congress  again  provided  for  it,  but  President  Taft 
vetoed  it  in  a  very  brief  message  which  did  not  state  his  reasons 
for  so  doing.  Two  years  later  Congress  once  more  enacted  the 
literacy  test,  only  to  have  it  vetoed  by  President  Wilson,  January 
28,  1915.  The  House  failed,  by  a  very  narrow  margin,  to  pass 
the  bill  over  his  veto.  A  noteworthy  development  in  recent  years 
is  the  very  strong  organized  opposition  to  restriction  and  to  the 
literacy  tests  in  particular.] 

31.    THE  MAIN   PROVISIONS  OF  THE  IMMIGRATION  ACT 

OF  1907  x 

Be  it  enacted  by  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives  of 
the  United  States  of  America  in  Congress  assembled,  That  there 
shall  be  levied  a  tax  of  four  dollars  for  every  alien  entering  the 
United  States.  The  money  thus  collected  shall  constitute  a  per- 
manent appropriation  to  be  called  the  "immigrant  fund,"  to 
be  used  to  defray  the  expense  of  regulating  the  immigration  of 
aliens  into  the  United  States.  The  tax  imposed  by  this  section 
shall  be  a  lien  upon  the  vessel  or  other  vehicle  of  transportation 
bringing  such  aliens  to  the  United  States. 

SEC.  2.  That  the  following  classes  of  aliens  shall  be  excluded 
from  the  United  States  :  All  idiots,  imbeciles,  feeble-minded  per- 
sons, epileptics,  insane  persons,  and  persons  who  have  been  insane 
within  five  years  previous  ;  persons  who  have  had  two  or  more 
attacks  of  insanity  at  any  time  previously  ;  paupers,  persons  likely 
to  become  a  public  charge,  professional  beggars,  persons  afflicted 
with  tuberculosis  or  with  a  loathsome  or  dangerous  contagious 
disease  ;  persons  not  comprehended  within  any  of  the  foregoing 
excluded  classes  who  are  found  to  be  mentally  or  physically  de- 
fective, such  mental  or  physical  defect  being  of  a  nature  which 
may  affect  the  ability  of  such  alien  to  earn  a  living ;  persons  who 
have  been  convicted  of  or  admit  having  committed  a  felony  or 
other  crime  or  misdemeanor  involving  moral  turpitude;  polygamists 

1  As  amended  in  sections  2  and  3  by  the  Act  of  March  26,  1910.  For  the  full 
text  of  the  act,  see  Abstracts  of  the  Reports  of  the  Immigration  Commission, 
1911,  Vol.  II,  pp.  73!-747- 


374  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

or  persons  who  admit  their  belief  in  the  practice  of  polygamy, 
anarchists,  or  persons  who  believe  in  or  advocate  the  overthrow 
by  force  or  violence  of  the  Government  of  the  United  States,  or 
of  all  government,  or  of  all  forms  of  law,  or  the  assassination  of 
public  officials ;  prostitutes,-  or  women  or  girls  coming  into  the 
United  States  for  the  purpose  of  prostitution  or  for  any  other 
immoral  purpose ;  persons  who  are  supported  by  or  receive  in 
whole  or  in  part  the  proceeds  of  prostitution ;  persons  who  procure 
or  attempt  to  bring  in  prostitutes  or  women  or  girls  for  the  pur- 
pose of  prostitution  or  for  any  other  immoral  purpose ;  persons 
hereinafter  called  contract  laborers,  who  have  been  induced  or 
solicited  to  migrate  to  this  country  by  offers  or  promises  of  em- 
ployment or  in  consequence  of  agreements,  oral,  written  or 
printed,  express  or  implied,  to  perform  labor  in  this  country  of 
any  kind,  skilled,  or  unskilled  ;  those  who  have  been,  within  one 
year  from  the  date  of  application  for  admission  to  the  United 
States,  deported  as  having  been  induced  or  solicited  to  migrate 
as  above  described  ;  any  person  whose  ticket  or  passage  is  paid 
for  with  the  money  of  another,  or  who  is  assisted  by  others  to 
come,  unless  it  is  affirmatively  and  satisfactorily  shown  that  such 
person  does  not  belong  to  one  of  the  foregoing  excluded  classes, 
and  that  said  ticket  or  passage  was  not  paid  for  by  any  corpora- 
tion, association,  society,  municipality,  or  foreign  government, 
either  directly  or  indirectly ;  all  children  under  sixteen  years  of 
age,  unaccompanied  by  one  or  both  of  their  parents,  at  the  dis- 
cretion of  the  Secretary  of  Commerce  and  Labor  or  under  such 
regulations  as  he  may  from  time  to  time  prescribe  :  Provided, 
That  nothing  in  this  Act  shall  exclude,  if  otherwise  admissible, 
persons  convicted  of  an  offense  purely  political,  not  involving 
moral  turpitude  :  Provided  further,  That  the  provisions  of  this 
section  relating  to  the  payments  for  tickets  or  passage  by  any 
corporation,  association,  society,  municipality,  or  foreign  govern- 
ment shall  not  apply  to  the  tickets  or  passage  of  aliens  in  imme- 
diate and  continuous  transit  through  the  United  States  to  foreign 
contiguous  territory  :  And  provided  further,  That  skilled  labor 
may  be  imported  if  labor  of  like  kind  unemployed  cannot  be 
found  in  this  country  :  And  provided  further,  That  the  provisions 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  375 

of  this  law  applicable  to  contract  labor  shall  not  be  held  to  exclude 
professional  actors,  artists,  lecturers,  singers,  ministers  of  any  reli- 
gious denomination,  professors  for  colleges  or  seminaries,  persons 
belonging  to  any  recognized  learned  profession,  or  persons  em- 
ployed strictly  as  personal  or  domestic  servants. 

SEC.  3.  That  the  importation  into  the  United  States  of  any 
alien  for  the  purpose  of  prostitution  or  for  any  other  immoral 
purpose  is  hereby  forbidden  ;  and  whoever  shall  directly  or  in- 
directly, import,  or  attempt  to  import,  into  the  United  States,  any 
alien  for  the  purpose  of  prostitution  or  for  any  other  immoral 
purpose,  or  whoever  shall  hold  or  attempt  to  hold  any  alien  for 
any  such  purpose,  in  pursuance  of  such  illegal  importation,  or 
whoever  shall  keep,  maintain,  control,  support,  employ,  or  harbor 
in  any  house  or  other  place,  for  the  purpose  of  prostitution  or  for 
any  other  immoral  purpose,  in  pursuance  of  such  illegal  importa- 
tion, any  alien,  shall,  in  every  such  case,  be  deemed  guilty  of  a 
felony,  and  on  conviction  thereof  be  imprisoned  not  more  than 
ten  years  and  pay  a  fine  of  not  more  than  five  thousand  dollars. 
Jurisdiction  for  the  trial  and  punishment  of  the  felonies  herein- 
before set  forth  shall  be  in  any  district  to  or  into  which  said  alien 
is  brought  in  pursuance  of  said  importation  by  the  person  or  per- 
sons accused,  or  in  any  district  in  which  a  violation  of  any  of  the 
foregoing  provisions  of  this  section  occur.  Any  alien  who  shall 
be  found  an  inmate  of  or  connected  with  the  management  of  a 
house  of  prostitution  or  practicing  prostitution  after  such  alien 
shall  have  entered  the  United  States,  or  who  shall  receive,  share 
in,  or  derive  benefit  from  any  part  of  the  earnings  of  any  prosti- 
tute ;  or  who  is  employed  by,  in,  or  in  connection  with  any  house 
of  prostitution  or  music  or  dance  hall  or  other  place  of  amuse- 
ment or  resort  habitually  frequented  by  prostitutes,  or  where  pros- 
titutes gather,  or  who  in  any  way  assists,  protects,  or  promises  to 
protect  from  arrest  any  prostitute,  shall  be  deemed  to  be  unlaw- 
fully within  the  United  States  and  shall  be  deported  in  the  manner 
provided  by  sections  twenty  and  twenty-one  of  this  Act.  That  any 
alien  who  shall,  after  he  has  been  debarred  or  deported  in  pursu- 
ance of  the  provisions  of  this  section,  attempt  thereafter  to  return 
to  or  to  enter  the  United  States  shall  be  deemed  guilty  of  a 


3/6  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

misdemeanor,  and  shall  be  imprisoned  for  not  more  than  two 
years.  Any  alien  who  shall  be  convicted  under  any  of  the  provi- 
sions of  this  section  shall,  at  the  expiration  of  his  sentence,  be 
taken  into  custody  and  returned  to  the  country  whence  he  came, 
or  of  which  he  is  a  subject  or  a  citizen,  in  the  manner  provided 
in  sections  twenty  and  twenty-one  of  this  Act.  In  all  prosecutions 
under  this  section  the  testimony  of  a  husband  or  wife  shall  be 
admissible  and  competent  evidence  against  a  wife  or  husband. 

SEC.  4.  That  it  shall  be  a  misdemeanor  for  any  person,  com- 
pany, partnership,  or  corporation,  in  any  manner  whatsoever,  to 
prepay  the  transportation  or  in  any  way  to  assist  or  encourage 
the  importation  or  migration  of  any  contract  laborer  or  contract 
laborers  into  the  United  States,  unless  such  contract  laborer  or 
contract  laborers  are  exempted  under  the  terms  of  the  last  two 
provisos  contained  in  section  two  of  this  Act. 

SEC.  5.  That  for  every  violation  of  any  of  the  provisions  of 
section  four  of  this  Act  the  person,  partnership,  company,  or 
corporation  violating  the  same,  by  knowingly  assisting,  encourag- 
ing, or  soliciting  the  migration  or  importation  of  any  contract 
laborer  into  the  United  States  shall  forfeit  and  pay  for  every  such 
offense  the  sum  of  one  thousand  dollars. 

SEC.  6.  That  it  shall  be  unlawful  to  assist  or  encourage  the 
importation  or  migration  of  any  alien  by  promise  of  employment 
through  advertisements  printed  and  published  in  any  foreign  coun- 
try ;  and  any  alien  coming  to  this  country  in  consequence  of  such 
an  advertisement  shall  be  treated  as  coming  under  promise  or 
agreement  as  contemplated  in  section  two  of  this  Act,  and  the 
penalties  imposed  by  section  five  shall  be  applicable  to  such  a 
case  :  Provided,  that  this  section  shall  not  apply  to  States  or  Terri- 
tories, the  District  of  Columbia,  or  places  subject  to  the  jurisdic- 
tion of  the  United  States  advertising  the  inducements  they  offer 
for  immigration  thereto,  respectively. 

SEC.  7.  That  no  transportation  company  shall,  directly  or  indi- 
rectly, either  by  writing,  printing,  or  oral  representation,  solicit 
or  encourage  the  immigration  of  any  aliens  into  the  United  States, 
but  this  shall  not  be  held  to  prevent  transportation  companies 
from  issuing  letters,  circulars,  or  advertisements,  stating  the 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  377 

sailings  of  their  vessels  and  terms  and  facilities  of  transportation 
therein ;  and  for  a  violation  of  this  provision,  any  such  transpor- 
tation company  .  .  .  shall  be  ...  subjected  to  the  penalties  imposed 
by  section  five  of  this  Act. 

SEC.  9.  That  it  shall  be  unlawful  for  any  person,  including 
any  transportation  company  other  than  railway  lines  entering  the 
United  States  from  foreign  contiguous  territory,  ...  to  bring  to  the 
United  States  any  alien  subject  to  any  of  the  following  disabili- 
ties :  Idiots,  imbeciles,  epileptics,  or  persons  afflicted  with  tuber- 
culosis or  with  a  loathsome  or  dangerous  contagious  disease,  and  if 
it  shall  appear  .  .  .  that  any  alien  so  brought  to  the  United  States 
was  afflicted  with  any  of  the  said  diseases  or  disabilities  at  the 
time  of  foreign  embarkation,  and  that  the  existence  of  such  dis- 
ease or  disability  might  have  been  detected  by  means  of  a 
competent  medical  examination  at  such  time,  such  person  or 
transportation  company  .  .  .  shall  pay  to  the  collector  of  customs 
.  .  .  the  sum  of  one  hundred  dollars  for  each  and  every  violation 
of  the  provisions  of  this  section. 

SEC.  10.  That  the  decision  of  the  board  of  special  inquiry, 
hereinafter  provided  for,  based  upon  the  certificate  of  the  exam- 
ining medical  officer,  shall  be  final  as  to  the  rejection  of  aliens 
affected  with  tuberculosis  or  with  any  loathsome  or  dangerous 
contagious  disease,  or  with  any  mental  or  physical  disability  which 
would  bring  such  aliens  within  any  of  the  classes  excluded  from 
admission. 

SEC.  12.  That  upon  the  arrival  of  any  alien  by  water  at  any 
port  within  the  United  States,  it  shall  be  the  duty  of  the  master 
or  commanding  officer  of  the  .  .  .  vessel  ...  to  deliver  to  the  immi- 
gration officers  .  .  .  lists  or  manifests  made  at  the  time  and  place 
of  embarkation,  .  .  .  which  shall  .  .  .  state  as  to  each  alien  the  full 
name,  age,  and  sex  ;  whether  married  or  single  ;  the  calling  or  occu- 
pation ;  whether  able  to  read  or  write  ;  the  nationality  ;  the  race  ; 
the  last  residence  ;  the  name  and  address  of  the  nearest  relative 
in  the  country  from  which  the  alien  came  ;  the  seaport  for  landing 
in  the  United  States  ;  the  final  destination,  if  any,  beyond  the  port 
of  landing  ;  whether  having  a  ticket  through  to  such  final  desti- 
nation ;  whether  the  alien  has  paid  his  own  passage  or  whether 


378  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

it  has  been  paid  by  any  other  person  or  by  any  corporation,  society, 
municipality,  or  government,  and  if  so,  by  whom  ;  whether  in  pos- 
session of  fifty  dollars,  and  if  less,  how  much  ;  whether  going  to 
join  a  friend  or  relative,  and  if  so,  what  relative  or  friend,  and  his 
or  her  name  and  complete  address  ;  -whether  ever  before  in  the 
United  States,  and  if  so,  when  and  where  ;  whether  ever  in  prison 
or  almshouse  or  an  institution  or  hospital  for  the  care  of  the  insane 
and  supported  by  charity ;  whether  a  polygamist,  whether  an 
anarchist,  whether  coining  by  reason  of  any  offer,  etc.,  express  or 
implied,  to  perform  labor  in  the  United  States,  and  what  is  the 
alien's  condition  of  health,  mental  and  physical,  and  whether 
deformed  or  crippled,  and  if  so,  for  how  long  and  from  what  cause. 

SEC.  13.  That  all  aliens  arriving  by  water  .  .  .  shall  be  listed  in 
convenient  groups,  and  no  one  list  or  manifest  shall  contain  more 
than  thirty  names.  To  each  alien  or  head  of  a  family  shall  be 
given  a  ticket  on  which  shall  be  written  his  name,  a  number  or 
letter  designating  the  list  in  which  his  name,  and  so  forth,  is 
contained,  and  his  number  on  said  list,  for  convenience  of  identi- 
fication on  arrival.  Each  list  or  manifest  shall  be  verified  by  the 
signature  and  the  oath  or  affirmation  of  the  master  or  command- 
ing officer,  or  the  first  or  second  below  him  in  command,  taken 
before  an  immigration  officer  at  the  port  of  arrival,  to  the  effect 
that  he  has  caused  the  surgeon  of  said  vessel  sailing  therewith  to 
make  a  physical  and  oral  examination  of  each  of  said  aliens,  and 
that  from  the  report  of  said  surgeon  and  from  his  own  investiga- 
tion, he  believes  that  no  one  of  said  aliens  is  an  idiot,  or  imbecile, 
or  a  feeble-minded  person,  or  insane  person,  or  a  pauper  [etc.,  etc.]. 

SEC.  14.  That  the  surgeon  of  said  vessel  sailing  therewith 
shall  also  sign  each  of  said  lists  or  manifests  and  make  oath  or 
affirmation  in  like  manner  before  an  immigration  officer  at  the 
port  of  arrival,  stating  his  professional  experience  and  qualifica- 
tions as  a  physician  and  surgeon,  and  that  he  has  made  a  per- 
sonal examination  of  each  of  the  said  aliens  named  therein,  and 
that  the  said  list  or  manifest,  according  to  the  best  of  his  knowl- 
edge and  belief,  is  full,  correct,  and  true  in  all  particulars  rela- 
tive to  the  mental  and  physical  condition  of  said  aliens.  If  no 
surgeon  sails  with  any  vessel  bringing  aliens  the  mental  and 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  379 

physical  examinations  and  the  verifications  of  the  lists  or  mani- 
fests shall  be  made  by  some  competent  surgeon  employed  by  the 
owners  of  the  said  vessel. 

SEC.  15.  That  in  the  case  of  the  failure  of  ...  commanding 
officer  of  any  vessel  to  deliver  .  .  .  lists  or  manifests  of  all  aliens 
on  board  thereof,  he  shall  pay  ten  dollars  for  each  alien  concern- 
ing whom  the  above  information  is  not  contained  in  any  list  as 
aforesaid. 

SEC.  1 6.  That  upon  the  receipt  by  the  immigration  officers  of 
the  lists  or  manifests  of  incoming  aliens,  it  shall  be  their  duty 
to  inspect  all  such  aliens.  Said  immigration  officers  may  order 
a  temporary  removal  of  such  aliens  for  examination  at  a  desig- 
nated time  and  place,  but  such  temporary  removal  shall  not  be 
considered  a  landing. 

SEC.  17.  That  the  physical  and  mental  examination  of  all 
arriving  aliens  shall  be  made  by  medical  officers  of  the  United 
States  Public  Health  and  Marine  Hospital  Service,  who  shall 
certify  for  the  information  of  the  immigration  officers  and  the 
boards  of  special  inquiry  hereinafter  provided  for,  any  and  all 
physical  defects  or  diseases  observed  by  said  medical  officers  in 
any  such  alien. 

SEC.  19.  That  all  aliens  brought  to  this  country  in  violation 
of  law  shall,  if  practicable,  be  immediately  sent  back  to  the 
country  whence  they  respectively  came  on  the  vessels  bringing 
them.  The  cost  of  their  maintenance  while  on  land,  as  well  as 
the  expense  of  their  return,  shall  be  borne  by  the  owners  of  the 
vessels  on  which  they  came,  and  if  any  master  shall  refuse  to 
receive  back  such  aliens  or  to  return  them  to  the  foreign  port 
from  which  they  came,  he  shall  be  deemed  guilty  of  a  misde- 
meanor and  shall,  on  conviction,  be  punished  by  a  fine  of  not  less 
than  three  hundred  dollars  for  each  offense. 

SEC.  20.  That  any  alien  who  shall  enter  the  United  States  in 
violation  of  law,  and  such  as  become  public  charges  from  causes 
existing  prior  to  landing,  shall,  upon  the  warrant  of  the  Secretary 
of  Commerce  and  Labor,  be  taken  into  custody  and  deported  to 
the  country  whence  he  came  at  any  time  within  three  years  after 
the  date  of  his  entry  into  the  United  States. 


380  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

SEC.  22.  That  the  Commissioner-General  of  Immigration,  in 
addition  to  such  other  duties  as  may  by  law  be  assigned  to  him, 
shall,  under  the  direction  of  the  Secretary  of  Commerce  and 
Labor,  have  charge  of  the  administration  of  all  laws  relating  to 
the  immigration  of  aliens  into  the  United  States,  and  shall  have 
.  .  .  supervision  of  all  officers  .  .  .  and  employees  appointed  there- 
under. He  shall  establish  such  rules  and  regulations,  prescribe 
such  forms  of  bond,  reports,  entries,  and  other  papers,  and  shall 
issue  from  time  to  time  such  instructions  ...  as  he  shall  deem 
best  calculated  for  carrying  out  the  provisions  of  this  Act  and  for 
protecting  the  United  States  and  aliens  migrating  thereto  from 
fraud  and  loss.  .  .  .  The  decision  of  any  .  .  .  officer,  if  favorable 
to  the  admission  of  any  alien,  shall  be  subject  to  challenge  by  any 
other  immigration  officer,  and  such  challenge  shall  operate  to  take 
the  alien  whose  right  to  land  is  so  challenged  before  a  board  of 
special  inquiry  for  its  investigation.  Every  alien  who  may  not 
appear  to  the  examining  immigrant  inspector  at  the  port  of 
arrival  to  be  clearly  and  beyond  a  doubt  entitled  to  land  shall 
be  detained  for  examination  in  relation  thereto  by  a  board  of 
special  inquiry. 

SEC.  25.  That  such  boards  of  special  inquiry  shall  be  appointed 
by  the  commissioner  of  immigration  at  the  various  ports  of  arrival 
as  may  be  necessary  for  the  prompt  determination  of  all  cases  of 
immigrants  detained  at  such  ports  under  the  provisions  of  law. 
Each  board  shall  consist  of  three  members,  who  shall  be  selected 
from  such  of  the  immigrant  officials  in  the  service  as  the 
Commissioner-General  of  Immigration,  with  the  approval  of  the 
Secretary  of  Commerce  and  Labor,  shall  from  time  to  time  desig- 
nate as  qualified  to  serve  on  such  boards.  .  .  .  Such  boards  shall 
have  authority  to  determine  whether  an  alien  who  has  been  duly 
held  shall  be  allowed  to  land  or  shall  be  deported.  All  hearings 
before  boards  shall  be  separate  and  apart  from  the  public,  but 
the  said  boards  shall  keep  a  complete  permanent  record  of  their 
proceedings  and  of  all  such  testimony  as  may  be  produced  before 
them  ;  and  the  decision  of  any  two  members  of  a  board  shall 
prevail,  but  either  the  alien  or  any  dissenting  member  of  the  said 
board  may  appeal  through  the  commissioner  of  immigration  at 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  381 

the  port  of  arrival  and  the  Commissioner-General  of  Immigration 
to  the  Secretary  of  Commerce  and  Labor,  and  the  taking  of  such 
appeal  shall  operate  to  stay  any  action  .  .  .  until  the  receipt  by  the 
commissioner  of  immigration  at  the  port  of  arrival  of  such  deci- 
sion which  shall  be  rendered  solely  upon  the  evidence  adduced 
before  the  board  of  special  inquiry. 

SEC.  37.  That  whenever  an  alien  shall  have  taken  up  his 
permanent  residence  in  this  country,  and  shall  have  filed  his 
declaration  of  intention  to  become  a  citizen,  and  thereafter  shall 
send  for  his  wife,  or  minor  children  to  join  him,  if  said  wife  or 
any  of  said  children  shall  be  found  to  be  affected  with  any  con- 
tagious disorder,  such  wife  or  children  shall  be  held,  under  such 
regulations  as  the  Secretary  of  Commerce  and  Labor  shall  pre- 
scribe, until  it  shall  be  determined  whether  the  disorder  will  be 
easily  curable,  or  whether  they  can  be  permitted  to  land  without 
danger  -to  other  persons  ;  and  they  shall  not  be  either  admitted 
or  deported  until  such  facts  have  been  ascertained  ;  and  if  it  shall 
be  determined  that  the  disorder  is  easily  curable  or  that  they 
can  be  permitted  to  land  without  danger  to  other  persons,  they 
shall,  if  otherwise  admissible,  thereupon  be  admitted. 

SEC.  38.  That  no  person  who  disbelieves  in  or  who  is  opposed 
to  all  organized  government,  or  who  is  a  member  of  or  affiliated 
with  any  organization  entertaining  and  teaching  such  disbelief  in 
or  opposition  to  all  organized  government,  or  who  advocates  or 
teaches  the  duty,  necessity,  or  propriety  of  the  unlawful  assaulting 
or  killing  of  any  officer  or  officers,  either  of  specific  individ- 
uals or  of  officers  generally,  of  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  or  of  any  other  organized  government,  because  of  his  or 
their  official  character,  shall  be  permitted  to  enter  the  United 
States  or  any  territory  or  place  subject  to  the  jurisdiction  thereof. 

SEC.  40.  Authority  is  hereby  given  the  Commissioner-General 
of  Immigration  to  establish,  under  the  direction  and  control  of 
the  Secretary  of  Commerce  and  Labor,  a  division  of  information 
in  the  Bureau  of  Immigration  and  Naturalization  ;  and  the  Secre- 
tary of  Commerce  and  Labor  shall  provide  such  clerical  assistance 
as  may  be  necessary.  It  shall  be  the  duty  of  said  division  to  pro- 
mote a  beneficial  distribution  of  aliens  admitted  into  the  United 


382  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

States  among  the  several  States  and  Territories  desiring  immi- 
gration. Correspondence  shall  be  had  with  the  proper  officials 
of  the  States  and  Territories,  and  said  division  shall  gather  from 
all  available  sources  useful  information  regarding  the  resources, 
products,  and  physical  characteristics  of  each  State  and  Territory, 
and  shall  publish  such  information  in  different  languages  and  dis- 
tribute the  publications  among  all  admitted  aliens  who  may  ask 
for  such  information  at  the  immigrant  stations  of  the  United 
States  and  to  such  other  persons  as  may  desire  the  same. 

32.   RECOMMENDATIONS     OF    THE    UNITED    STATES    IMMI- 
GRATION COMMISSION1 

As  a  result  of  the  investigation  the  Commission  is  unanimously 
of  the  opinion  that  in  framing  legislation  emphasis  should  be  laid 
upon  the  following  principles  : 

1.  While  the  American  people,  as  in  the  past,  welcome  the 
oppressed  of  other  lands,  care  should  be  taken  that  immigration 
be  such  both  in  quality  and  quantity  as  not  to  make  too  difficult 
the  process  of  assimilation. 

2.  Since  the  existing  law  and  further  special  legislation  recom- 
mended in  this  report  deal  with  the  physically  and  morally  unfit, 
further    general    legislation   concerning   the   admission   of  aliens 
should  be  based  primarily  upon  economic  or  business  considerations 
touching  the  prosperity  and  economic  well-being  of  our  people. 

3.  The  measure  of  the  rational,  healthy  development  of  a  coun- 
try is  not  the  extent  of  its  investment  of  capital,  its  output  of 
products,  or  its  exports  and  imports,  unless  there  is  a  correspond- 
ing economic  opportunity  afforded  to  the  citizen  dependent  upon 
employment  for  his  material,  mental,  and  moral  development. 

4.  The  development  of  business  may  be  brought  about  by  means 
which  lower  the  standard  of  living  of  the  wage-earners.    A  slow 
expansion  of  industry  which  would  permit  the  adaptation  and  as- 
similation of  the  incoming  labor  supply  is  preferable  to  a  very 

1  From  Hrief  Statement  of  the  Conclusions  and  Recommendations  of  the 
Immigration  Commission  (6ist  Cong.,  3d  Session,  Sen.  Doc.  No.  783),  lyi  i, 
pp.  37-40. 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  383 

rapid  industrial  expansion  which  results  in  the  immigration  of 
laborers  of  low  standards  and  efficiency,  who  imperil  the  Amer- 
ican standard  of  wages  and  conditions  of  employment. 
The  Commission  agrees  that : 

1.  To  protect  the  United  States  more  effectively  against  the 
immigration  of  criminal  and  certain  other  debarred  classes  — 

a.  Aliens  convicted  of  serious  crimes  within  a  period  of  five 
years  after  admission  should  be  deported  in  accordance  with  the 
provisions    of   House   bill   20,980,    Sixty-first    Congress,    second 
session. 

b.  Under  the  provisions  of  section  39  of  the  immigration  act 
of  February  20,  1907,  the  President  should  appoint  commissioners 
to  make  arrangements  with  such  countries  as  have  adequate  police 
records  to  supply  emigrants  with  copies  of  such  records,  and  that 
thereafter  immigrants  from  such  countries  should  be  admitted  to 
the  United  States  only  upon  the  production  of  proper  certificates 
showing  an  absence  of  convictions  for  excludable  crimes. 

c.  So   far  as   practicable   the   immigration   laws   should  be  so 
amended  as  to  be  made  applicable  to  alien  seamen. 

d.  Any  alien  who  becomes  a  public  charge  within  three  years 
after  his  arrival  in  this  country  should  be  subject  to  deportation 
in  the  discretion  of  the  Secretary  of  Commerce  and  Labor. 

2.  Sufficient  appropriation  should  be  regularly  made  to  enforce 
vigorously  the  provisions  of  the  laws  previously  recommended  by 
the  Commission  and  enacted  by  Congress  regarding  the  impor- 
tation of  women  for  immoral  purposes. 

3.  As  the  new  statute  relative  to  steerage  conditions  took  effect 
so  recently  as  January  i,  1909,  and  as  the  most  modern  steerage 
fully  complies  with  all  that  is  demanded  under  the  law,  the  Com- 
mission's only  recommendation  in  this  connection  is  that  a  statute 
be  immediately  enacted  providing  for  the  placing  of  Government 
officials,  both  men  and  women,  on  vessels  carrying  third-class  or 
steerage  passengers,  for  the  enforcement  of  the  law  and  the  pro- 
tection of  the  immigrant.    The  system  inaugurated  by  the  Com- 
mission of  sending  investigators  in  the  steerage  in  the  guise  of 
immigrants   should  be  continued  at  intervals  by  the   Bureau  of 
Immigration. 


384  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

4.  To  strengthen  the  certainty  of  just  and  humane  decisions 
of  doubtful  cases  at  ports  of  entry,  it  is  recommended  — 

That  section  25  of  the  immigration  act  of  1907  be  amended 
to  provide  that  boards  of  special  inquiry  should  be  appointed  by 
the  Secretary  of  Commerce  and  Labor,  and  that  they  should  be 
composed  of  men  whose  ability  and  training  qualify  them  for  the 
performance  of  judicial  functions  ;  that  the  provisions  compelling 
their  hearings  to  be  separate  and  apart  from  the  public  should 
be  repealed,  and  that  the  office  of  an  additional  Assistant  Secre- 
tary of  Commerce  and  Labor  to  assist  in  reviewing  such  appeals 
be  created. 

5.  To  protect  the  immigrant  against  exploitation  ;  to  discourage 
sending  savings  abroad  ;   to  encourage  permanent  residence  and 
naturalization  ;    and  to  secure  better  distribution  of  alien  immi- 
grants throughout  the  country  — 

a.  The  States  should  enact  laws  strictly  regulating  immigrant 
banks. 

b.  Proper  State  legislation  should  be  enacted  for  the  regulation 
of  employment  agencies. 

c.  Since  numerous  aliens  make  it  their  business  to  keep  im- 
migrants from  influences  that  may  tend  toward  their  assimilation 
and  naturalization  as  American  citizens  with  the  purpose  of  using 
their  funds,  of  encouraging  investment  of  their  savings  abroad, 
and  their  return  to  their  homeland,  aliens  who  attempt  to  per- 
suade  immigrants   not  to  become  American   citizens   should  be 
made  subject  to  deportation. 

d.  Since  the  distribution  of  the  thrifty  immigrant  to  sections 
of  the  country  where  he  may  secure  a  permanent  residence  to  the 
best  advantage,  and  especially  where  he  may  invest  his  savings 
in  farms  or  engage  in  agricultural  pursuits,  is  most  desirable,  the 
division  of  information   should  be  so  conducted  as  to  cooperate 
with  States  desiring  immigrant  settlers  ;  and  information  concern- 
ing  the  opportunities    for   settlement   should   be   brought  to  the 
attention  of  immigrants  in  industrial  centers  who  have  been  here 
for  some  time  and  who  might  be   thus   induced   to  invest  their 
savings  in  this  country  and   become  permanent  agricultural   set- 
tlers.   The  division  might  also  secure  and  furnish  to  all  laborers 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  385 

alike  information  showing  opportunities  for  permanent  employ- 
ment in  various  sections  of  the  country,  together  with  the  economic 
conditions  in  such  places. 

6.  One  of  the  provisions  of  section  2  of  the  act  of  1907  reads 
as  follows  : 

And  provided  further.  That  skilled  labor  may  be  imported  if  labor  of  like 
kind  unemployed  cannot  be  found  in  this  country. 

Instances  occasionally  arise,  especially  in  the  establishment  of 
new  industries  in  the  United  States,  where  labor  of  the  kind  de- 
sired, unemployed,  cannot  be  found  in  this  country  and  it  becomes 
necessary  to  import  such  labor.  Under  the  law  the  Secretary 
of  Commerce  and  Labor  has  no  authority  to  determine  the  ques- 
tions of  the  necessity  for  importing  such  labor  in  advance  of 
the  importation,  and  it  is  recommended  that  an  amendment  to 
the  law  be  adopted  by  adding  to  the  clause  cited  above  a  pro- 
vision to  the  effect  that  the  question  of  the  necessity  of  importing 
such  skilled  labor  in  any  particular  instance  may  be  determined 
by  the  Secretary  of  Commerce  and  Labor  upon  the  application  of 
any  person  interested  prior  to  any  action  in  that  direction  by 
such  person  ;  such  determination  by  the  Secretary  of  Commerce 
and  Labor  to  be  reached  after  a  full  hearing  and  an  investigation 
into  the  facts  of  the  case. 

7.  The  general  policy  adopted  by  Congress  in  1882  of  exclud- 
ing Chinese  laborers  should  be  continued. 

The  question  of  Japanese  and  Korean  immigration  should  be 
permitted  to  stand  without  further  legislation  so  long  as  the  pres- 
ent method  of  restriction  proves  to  be  effective. 

An  understanding  should  be  reached  with  the  British  Govern- 
ment whereby  East  Indian  laborers  would  be  effectively  prevented 
from  coming  to  the  United  States. 

8.  The  investigations  of  the  Commission  show  an  oversupply  of 
unskilled  labor  in  basic  industries  to  an  extent  which  indicates  an 
oversupply  of  unskilled  labor  in  the  industries  of  the  country  as  a 
whole,  and  therefore  demand  legislation  which  will  at  the  present 
time  restrict  the  further  admission  of  such  unskilled  labor. 

It  is  desirable  in  making  the  restriction  that  — 


386  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

a.  A  sufficient  number  be  debarred  to  produce  a  marked  effect 
upon  the  present  supply  of  unskilled  labor. 

b.  As  far  as  possible,  the  aliens  excluded  should  be  those  who 
come  to  this  country  with  no  intention  to  become  American  citi- 
zens or  even  to  maintain  a  permanent  residence  here,  but  merely 
to  save  enough,  by  the  adoption,  if  necessary,  of  low  standards  of 
living,  to  return  permanently  to  their  home  country.     Such  per- 
sons are  usually  men  unaccompanied  by  wives  or  children. 

c.  As  far  as  possible  the  aliens  excluded  should  also  be  those 
who,  by  reason  of  their  personal  qualities  or  habits,  would  least 
readily  be  assimilated  or  .would  make  the  least  desirable  citizens. 

The  following  methods  of  restricting  immigration  have  been 
suggested  : 

a.  The  exclusion  of  those  unable  to  read  or  write  in  some 
language. 

b.  The  limitation  of  the  number  of  each  race  arriving  each 
year  to  a  certain  percentage  of  the  average  of  that  race  arriving 
during  a  given  period  of  years. 

c.  The  exclusion  of  unskilled  laborers  unaccompanied  by  wives 
or  families. 

d.  The  limitation  of  the  number  of  immigrants  arriving  annu- 
ally at  any  port. 

e.  The  material  increase  in  the  amount  of  money  required  to 
be  in  the  possession  of  the  immigrant  at  the  port  of  arrival. 

f.  The  material  increase  of  the  head  tax. 

g.  The  levy  of  the  head  tax  so  as  to  make  a  marked  discrim- 
ination in  favor  of  men  with  families. 

All  these  methods  would  be  effective  in  one  way  or  another  in 
securing  restrictions  in  a  greater  or  less  degree.  A  majority  of  the 
Commission  favor  the  reading-and-writing  test  as  the  most  feasible 
single  method  of  restricting  undesirable  immigration. 

The  Commission  as  a  whole  recommends  restriction  as  demanded 
by  economic,  moral,  and  social  considerations,  furnishes  in  its 
report  reasons  for  such  restriction,  and  points  out  methods  by 
which  Congress  can  attain  the  desired  result  if  its  judgment 
coincides  with  that  of  the  Commission. 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  387 

33.    THE   RESTRICTION   OF  IMMIGRATION1 

The  immigration  problem  is  not  one  which  can  be  let  alone. 
It  is  a  dynamic  question,  which  demands  attention,  and  decision. 
If  we  settle  the  matter  by  determining  to  do  nothing,  we  thereby 
make  a  decision,  for  which  we  may  be  more  accountable  than  if 
we  took  some  positive  stand.  And  in  this  country  immigration 
will  not  be  let  alone.  Somebody  must  make  decisions,  and  frame 
policies  ;  and,  if  the  social  scientists  hold  aloof,  it  will  be  done 
by  selfish  interests,  and  quack  politicians. 

More  than  this,  it  is  an  immediate  problem.  Things  are  hap- 
pening with  alarming  rapidity,  and  what  is  to  be  done  must  be 
done  speedily.  These  are  the  reasons  which  justify  the  presen- 
tation of  certain  suggestions  for  improvement  in  our  method  of 
handling  the  immigration  situation  in  this  country. 

One  thing  we  may  be  sure  of  —  any  remedy  ought  to  bear 
some  immediate  relation  to  the  evils  which  it  contemplates  rem- 
edying. Before  proceeding  to  the  outline  of  the  proposed  new 
scheme  it  will  be  profitable  to  glance  hastily  over  the  most  im- 
portant of  the  evils  charged  against  immigration,  and  the  foremost 
remedies  which  have  been  suggested,  with  a  view  to  determining 
to  what  extent  the  latter  promise  direct  relief  from  the  former. 
The  chief  objections  to  the  present  immigration  situation  may  be 
summarized  under  eight  heads,  each  with  a  convenient  catchword 
to  fix  it  in  memory,  as  follows  : 

1.  We  have  too  many  immigrants.    A  million  a  year  of  the 
peasants  of  Europe  is  more  than  this  country  can  safely  under- 
take to  look  after.    This  may  be  called  the  "  numbers  "  objection. 

2.  The  immigrants  are  poorly  distributed.     The  great  majority 
of  them  settle  in  the  most  densely  populated  states,  and  in  the 
most  congested  sections  of  the  largest  cities  of  those  states.    The 
agricultural  regions,  which  particularly  want  them,   get  very  few 
of  them.    This  is  the  "  distribution  "  objection. 

3.  The  immigrants  are  poorly  assimilated,   or  not  assimilated 
at  all.     This  is  in  large   measure  due  to  the  faulty  distribution, 

1  By  II.  P.  Fairchild.  Adapted  from  the  American  Economic  Review  Supple- 
ment, Vol.  II,  No.  i  (March,  1912),  pp.  53-61. 


388  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

and  to  the  excessive  numbers.  There  is  great  danger  to  the  coun- 
try in  the  growing  heterogeneity  of  population,  which  results  from 
ever-increasing  numbers  of  immigrants,  of  widely  diverse  races, 
who  form  compact  colonies  in  our  great  cities,  and  come  in  slight 
touch  with  American  life.  The  "assimilation"  objection. 

4.  The    competition    of   alien    laborers,  accustomed   to   a  low 
standard  of  living,  is  lowering  the  wages  and  standard  of  living 
of  the  American  workmen  —  at  the  very  least,  it  is  preventing 
them  from  rising.     The   "  standard-of-living  "   objection. 

5.  Immigration   seriously  increases   the  amount  of   pauperism 
and  crime  in  the  United  States,  through  the  admission  of  large 
numbers  of  aliens  of  bad  moral  character,  or  low  economic  abil- 
ity.   The  "  pauperism-and-crime  "  objection. 

6.  The   present  immigration   movement  is  not  a  natural  one, 
but  is  stimulated  and  fostered  by  transportation  companies,  labor 
agents,  and  other  interested  parties.    Immigrants  come  with  mis- 
conceptions and   delusions,    and  without   any  natural   fitness   for 
American   life  ;  and  as  a  result  many  of  them  suffer  bitter  hard- 
ships and  add  nothing  to  the  life  of  this  country.    The  "  stimu- 
lation "  objection. 

7.  Many  —  perhaps  most  —  of  the  immigrants  enter  the  coun- 
try as  conscious  lawbreakers,  since  a  very  large  proportion  of  them 
knowingly  evade   the  contract-labor   provision  of   the  law.    Thus 
they  begin   their  American    life  with  a  spirit  of   indifference  or 
hostility  to  law,  which  augurs  ill  for  their  future  usefulness  to  the 
country.    The  "illegal  entrance"  objection. 

8.  Immigration,    as   at   present   conducted,    is    proving    of    no 
real  and  lasting  benefit  to  foreign  nations.    The  stimulus  given 
to  the  birth  rate  by  the  fact  of  emigration  prevents  any  relief  of 
congestion,    and  the   other   apparent   benefits   of    emigration   are 
offset  by  positive  evils.    The  difference  in  economic  level  between 
the  United  States  and  foreign  countries  is  gradually  being  obliter- 
ated at  the  expense  of  the  United  States,  and  without  bettering 
the  other  nations.    The  "  foreign-countries  "  objection. 

Not  all  of  the  foregoing  charges  have  as  yet  been  adequately 
proved.  Some  of  them  perhaps  never  can  be.  But  they  contain 
the  germ  of  the  most  important  criticisms  of  the  present  system, 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  389 

and  any  proposed  remedy  ought  to  promise  relief  for  at  least 
two  or  three  of  them. 

Among  the  principal  remedies  suggested  for  the  problem  under 
consideration  the  following  stand  out  prominently  : 

1.  The  literacy  test.    This  has  received  perhaps  more  attention 
than  any  other  single  remedy,  and  has  a  host  of  adherents.     It 
would  certainly  meet  the  numbers  objection.    Since  more  than  a 
quarter  of  the  immigrants  over  fourteen  years  of  age  can  neither 
read  nor  write,  the   strict  application  of   the   literacy  test  would 
probably   cut   down   the  total   immigration   to   an   approximately 
equal  degree.    It  is  difficult  to  see  how  the  literacy  test  would  be 
of  any  avail  in  meeting  the  distribution,  standard  of  living,  stimu- 
lation, or  illegal-entrance  objections.     It  might  help  to  a  limited 
degree  in  securing  better  assimilation  (number  3),  and  it  is  claimed 
that  literate  immigrants  are  somewhat  less  prone  to  pauperism  and 
crime  than  illiterate  ones  (number  5). 

2.  Consular  or  other  inspection  abroad,  either  at  the  port  of 
embarkation,  or  in    the   native  village  of  the   immigrant.    This 
might   secure   a   somewhat   better  enforcement   of    the    existing 
law,  and  obviate  some  of  the  hardships  of  the  rejected  immigrant. 
It  is  hard  to  see  how  it  could  materially  affect  any  one  of  the 
foregoing  objections. 

3.  Requiring   immigrants   to   come   up   to    a    certain    physical 
standard,    such   as    is    required    for   recruits   to    the   army.     This 
would  probably  remedy  the  numbers  objection  to  a  considerable 
extent,   but  would   hardly  meet  any  of   the  others.     Our  immi- 
grants  are   already   as   free   from   physical   and    mental    diseases 
and   weaknesses,  and  abnormalities,  as  a  rigid   examination  can 
make  them. 

4.  A  minimum- wage  requirement,  making  it  illegal  to  employ 
an  alien  at  less  than  a  specified  minimum  wage.     This  is  aimed 
directly  at  the  standard-of-living  objection.     It  hardly  touches  any 
of  the  others.    It  is,  furthermore,  highly  impracticable  and  unjust, 
as  it  would  impose  an  e.v  post  facto  basis  of  admission.    No  immi- 
grant  could   possibly  know  before  he   left    home  what  wage   he 
might  be  sure  of,  unless  he  was  under  contract,  which  is  legally 
prohibited,  nor  could  the  examining  inspectors  tell  anything  about 


390  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

it.  It  is  hard  to  see  what  would  be  done  with  aliens  who  could 
not  earn  the  minimum  wage,  unless  they  were  maintained  at  pub- 
lic expense,  which  would  subject  them  to  deportation,  and  would 
multiply  the  "tragedy  of  the  rejected  immigrant"  a  hundredfold. 
Other  suggested  remedies,  mentioned  in  the  Report  of  the 
Immigration  Commission,  are  as  follows  : 

5.  The  limitation  of  the  number  of  immigrants  of  each  race. 

6.  The  exclusion  of  unskilled  laborers  unaccompanied  by  wives 
or  families. 

7.  The  limitation  of  the  number  of  immigrants  arriving  annu- 
ally at  any  port. 

8.  The  material  increase  in  the  amount  of  money  required  to 
be  in  the  possession  of  the  immigrant,  or  of  the  head  tax. 

9.  The  levy  of  the  head  tax  so  as  to  make  a  marked  discrimi- 
nation in  favor  of  men  with  families. 

All  of  these  last  five  remedies,  except  the  very  last,  are  designed 
primarily  to  meet  the  numbers  objection,  and  would  be  effective 
to  a  greater  or  less  extent.  Those  which  aim  to  discriminate  in 
favor  of  men  with  families  might  also  have  some  effect  in  meet- 
ing the  assimilation  objection,  as  families  are  much  more  likely 
to  come  in  touch  with  Americanizing  influences  than  single  indi- 
viduals. They  might,  however,  operate  to  aggravate  the  pauper- 
ism-and-crime  objection,  as  men  might  be  induced  to  bring  over 
their  families  when  they  were  really  not  able  to  do  so,  and  later 
fall  into  pauperism,  or  be  led  into  crime. 

Looking  over  this  list  of  remedies,  it  becomes  apparent  that  the 
only  objection  which  most  of  them  seem  likely  to  meet  to  any 
considerable  extent  is  the  numbers  objection.  The  mere  reduc- 
tion in  the  number  of  immigrants  is  very  probably  desirable,  and 
might  be  accomplished  in  a  variety  of  ways.  Most  of  the  reme- 
dies, however,  fail  absolutely  to  touch  directly  the  great  problems 
of  distribution,  assimilation,  the  degrading  competition  of  low 
standards  of  living,  pauperism  and  crime,  unnatural  immigration, 
and  evasion  of  law,  to  say  nothing  of  the  somewhat  idealistic 
problem  of  really  bettering  foreign  nations.  The  scheme  of  regu- 
lation which  is  now  to  be  discussed  aims  to  touch  directly  every 
one  of  these  objections. 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  391 

The  first  change  involved  in  the  proposed  plan  is  for  the  gov- 
ernment to  recognize  frankly  its  responsibility  for  aliens  after  they 
have  been  admitted,  and  to  take  charge,  officially  and  authori- 
tatively, of  the  distribution  of  immigrants  in  this  country.  Hith- 
erto we  have  tacitly  assumed  that  if  sufficient  care  is  exercised  in 
the  matter  of  admission,  our  duty  is  done,  and  the  mere  fact  of 
residence  in  this  country  will  bring  to  the  immigrant  all  of  those 
advantages  which  he  is  seeking,  and  the  United  States  will  secure 
all  the  benefit  possible  from  his  presence.  We  are  tardily  learning 
the  utter  falsity  of  this  assumption.  To  promote  better  distribu- 
tion, the  government  should  make  it  its  business  to  ascertain 
where  immigrant  labor  is  actually  needed,  and  where  it  can  be  sup- 
plied without  injuring  economic  and  social  conditions  —  the  two 
ideas  are  nearly  correlative  —  and  should  see  to  it  that  the  im- 
migrants go  there  and  not  elsewhere.  To  accomplish  this,  the 
aid  of  state  and  local  boards  should  be  enlisted.  These  agencies 
should  furnish  to  the  government  authorities  a  statement  of  the 
number  of  immigrants  who  are  desired  in  various  sections,  the 
nature  of  the  work  they  are  desired  to  do,  and  the  wages  they 
may  expect.  Private  employers  should  be  encouraged  to  state 
their  needs  to  such  boards,  or  directly  to  the  federal  authorities, 
and  make  known  how  many  immigrants  they  wish  to  employ.  All 
such  requests  should  be  investigated,  and  given  official  approval 
before  they  are  acted  upon. 

All  of  these  requests,  and  this  information,  should  be  compiled 
and  tabulated,  and  the  officials  of  foreign  governments  should  be 
supplied  with  the  lists  of  places,  the  numbers  of  immigrants  de- 
sired, wages,  etc.  Prospective  immigrants  should  then  be  required 
to  select  the  places  to  which  they  wish  to  go  before  emigrating. 
A  small  proportion  might  possibly  be  allowed  to  emigrate  without 
any  specified  destination  —  a  sort  of  floating  representation. 

To  aid  in  the  carrying  out  of  this  provision,  passports  should 
be  required  of  all  immigrants,  bearing  the  approval  of  the  foreign 
nation  of  the  emigration  of  the  individual,  and  stating  the 
destination  which  the  immigrant  has  chosen  in  this  country. 

Under  this  system,  the  greater  number  —  if  not  all  —  of  the 
arriving  immigrants  would  come  with  their  destination  already 


392  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

picked  out,  and  approved  of  by  the  United  States  government. 
The  government  should  then  see  that  they  get  there.  The  immi- 
grant should  not  be  discharged  from  authority  until  he  has 
reached  his  specified  destination.  Inspectors  should  accompany 
the  immigrant  trains,  and  turn  their  charges  over  to  state  or  local 
officials,  who  should  be  held  responsible  for  their  safe  delivery. 

In  addition  to  the  direct  and  obvious  advantage  of  securing  a 
more  rational  distribution,  these  provisions  would  also  result  in 
encouraging  the  immigrant  to  make  a  more  careful  study  of  con- 
ditions in  America  before  he  left  home,  and  to  choose  his  destina- 
tion on  the  grounds  of  the  need  of  his  services,  rather  than  because 
some  friend  or  relative  lived  there.  This  would  help  to  do  away 
with  much  of  the  ignorance  and  misconception  which  character- 
ize so  many  of  the  immigrants  to-day.  The  passport  provision, 
furthermore,  would  require  the  foreign  government  to  scrutinize 
each  would-be  emigrant,  and  this,  if  conscientiously  done,  would 
tend  to  limit  the  number  of  inadmissibles  who  annually  reach 
our  shores.  * 

It  may  seem  that  this  arrangement  would  tend  to  encourage 
the  immigration  of  contract  laborers.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
it  would.  In  fact,  one  part  of  the  proposed  plan  under  discussion 
is  the  entire  repeal  and  abolishment  of  the  contract-labor  clause 
of  the  immigration  law.  It  is  one  of  the  greatest  absurdities  of 
our  present  legislation  that  it  assumes  and  implies  that  the  most 
desirable  immigrant  is  the  one  who  knows  absolutely  nothing  about 
what  work  he  is  going  to  do  in  this  country,  or  whether  he  will 
be  able  to  find  any.  It  puts  a  premium  upon  ignorance  and  lack 
of  foresight.  If  we  should  see  a  group  of  our  own  fellow  citizens 
starting  out  for  some  foreign  country  with  such  a  hazy  idea  of 
their  prospects  there,  we  should  brand  them  as  most  shiftless  and 
foolhardy.  This  section  of  our  laws  has  been  made  necessary  so 
far  because  the  government  has  not  hitherto  taken  control  of  the 
number  of  immigrants,  nor  of  their  distribution,  nor  felt  any 
responsibility  for  the  condition  of  the  immigrant  after  landing. 
Under  the  proposed  system,  the  government  should  not  only  allow, 
but  encourage,  the  making  of  contracts  with  prospective  immi- 
grants, by  state  and  local  boards  of  public  works,  and  by  private 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  393 

employers.  But  every  contract  should  be  made  under  the  ap- 
proval of  the  government,  witnessed  by  an  official  stamp  of  some 
kind.  The  government  authorities  should  also  establish  a  minimum 
wage  for  each  locality  or  industry,  below  which  contracts  must 
not  be  made.  Any  contract  which  lacked  the  official  seal,  or 
named  a  wage  below  the  fixed  minimum  should  be  ipso  facto  null 
and  void.  Any  immigrant,  party  to  such  a  contract,  should  be 
subject  to  deportation,  and  the  employer  to  punishment. 

To  facilitate  the  making  of  legal  contracts,  the  government 
should  provide  printed  forms,  stating  the  place,  the  name  of  the 
employer,  the  occupation,  conditions  of  labor,  and  wage,  leaving 
a  blank  for  the  name  of  the  immigrant.  By  this  means,  em- 
ployers of  labor  who  found  themselves  unable  to  secure  an  ade- 
quate supply  of  labor  at  a  fair  living  wage  in  this  country  could 
send  their  agents  to  foreign  countries,  and  secure  laborers  in  an 
open  and  aboveboard,  legal  way,  accomplishing  the  same  end 
that  they  now  achieve  by  underhand  and  illegal  methods,  through 
the  assistance  of  unscrupulous  labor  agents  and  contractors.  The 
great  difference  would  be  that  under  the  new  system  the  wage 
agreed  upon  would  have  to  be  such  as  met  with  official  sanction. 
If  employers  did  not  find  it  worth  while  to  engage  foreign  labor 
under  such  conditions,  it  would  simply  show  that  there  was  no 
real  need  for  laborers  in  the  country,  and  would  work  to  the 
advantage  of  the  workmen  already  here. 

The  plan,  as  thus  far  outlined,  contains  three  main  proposi- 
tions :  (i)  government  control  of  the  distribution  of  immigrants; 
(2)  requirement  of  passports  for  admission ;  (3)  the  abolition 
of  the  contract-labor  clause,  and  the  encouragement  and  govern- 
ment control  of  labor  contracts  with  aliens,  at  a  minimum  wage. 
These  three  provisions  meet  most  of  the  stock  objections  which 
have  been  outlined.  They  meet  directly  the  distribution,  and 
therefore  the  assimilation,  objection.  The  abolition  of  the  con- 
tract-labor clause,  in  connection  with  the  minimum  wage,  meets 
the  standard-of-living  objection.  The  requirement  of  a  passport, 
coupled  with  better  distribution,  would  mitigate  the  dangers  of 
pauperism  and  crime.  The  diminution  of  the  power  of  the  labor 
agent,  and  the  various  runners,  would  tend  to  make  the  movement 


394  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

a  more  natural  one.  This  would  also  be  furthered  by  requiring 
the  immigrant  to  choose  a  specific  destination  out  of  a  long  list 
recommended  by  the  United  States  government.  The  abolition 
of  the  contract-labor  clause  would  remove  the  greatest  temptation 
to  illegal  entrance,  for  the  majority  of  immigrants. 

The  only  objections  not  thus  far  provided  for  are  the  numbers 
objection  and  the  foreign  countries  objection.  In  regard  to  these, 
it  should  be  noted,  first  of  all,  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  three 
propositions  which  have  been  put  forth  which  is  inconsistent  with 
most  of  the  important  plans  for  reducing  numbers,  or  which 
would  prevent  them  from  being  applied  together.  There  is,  how- 
ever, another  method  of  meeting  directly  the  two  remaining 
objections,  which  harmonizes  especially  well  with  the  rest  of  the 
proposed  plan.  It  would  be  a  decided  innovation,  and  the  attempt 
to  introduce  it  might  meet  with  insuperable  obstacles  of  a  political 
and  administrative  nature.  At  first  sight  it  presents  a  decided 
aspect  of  impracticability.  Nevertheless,  it  is  interesting  from  a 
theoretic  standpoint,  and  might  prove  more  possible  of  applica- 
tion than  at  first  seems  probable.  Briefly  stated,  it  is  as  follows. 

The  immigration  of  unskilled  laborers  to  this  country  should 
be  restricted  to  a  single  foreign  nation,  or  group  of  nations,  each 
year.  Let  it  be  understood,  by  international  agreement,  that  in 
one  year  only  immigrants  from  Germany  would  be  admitted,  the 
next  from  Italy,  the  next  from  Austria- Hungary,  etc.  Nations 
which  send  only  small  contingents  of  immigrants  should  be 
grouped,  either  with  each  other,  or  with  one  of  the  larger  coun- 
tries. Passports  to  unskilled  immigrants  from  other  nations  should 
not  be  recognized,  with  the  possible  exception  that  each  nation 
might  be  allowed,  every  year,  a  small  number  of  immigrants,  to 
be  chosen  by  themselves,  to  cover  exceptional  cases.  The  United 
States  government  could  then  maintain  a  special  force  of  inspec- 
tors, who  should  make  their  headquarters  in  the  nation  whose 
turn  it  was,  year  by  year,  and  help  to  direct  and  facilitate  the 
movement  from  that  end. 

This  provision  would  manifestly  help  to  cut  down  numbers,  for 
it  is  not  at  all  likely  that  ever,  in  a  single  year,  would  as  many 
immigrants  arrive  from  any  single  country,  or  group  of  countries, 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  395 

as  now  come  from  all  countries.  It  would  also  give  foreign 
nations  a  chance  to  utilize  emigration,  consciously  and  advisedly, 
for  their  own  benefit.  There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  the 
popular  idea  that  a  regular  emigration  from  a  country  tends  to 
relieve  congestion  is  a  fallacy.  Rather  does  it  seem  probable  that 
population  increases  at  least  as  fast,  in  a  country  with  a  large 
emigration,  as  if  there  was  none  at  all.  On  the  other  hand,  a 
sudden  and  extensive  emigration,  limited  in  time,  may  result  in 
cutting  down  population  and  giving  the  standard  of  living  time 
to  rise  before  the  forces  of  reproduction  have  filled  up  the  gap. 
Under  the  proposed  plan,  any  foreign  nation  which  believed  that 
a  large  emigration  of  its  citizens  would  be  a  benefit  both  to  those 
who  went  and  those  who  stayed  —  as  for  instance,  on  the  occasion 
of  the  introduction  of  some  important  labor-saving  machine  — 
could  make  arrangements  with  the  United  States  to  take  its 
turn  at  such  a  time.  If  foreign  nations  did  not  care  to  do  their 
part  in  such  an  arrangement,  or  if  the  natives  did  not  wish  to 
leave,  the  immigration  problem  would  be  happily  solved  for  us, 
without  any  responsibility  on  our  part. 

Against  the  plan  thus  outlined,  a  host  of  objections,  criticisms, 
doubts,  and  queries  arrays  itself.  Of  these,  no  one  can  be  more 
conscious  than  the  writer.  Yet  the  same  can  be  said  of  almost 
any  human  device  or  project.  The  validity  of  such  a  proposition 
must  rest  upon  searching  analysis  and  criticism,  and  ultimately 
upon  trial.  The  pressing  and  immediate  nature  of  the  immigration 
problem  in  the  United  States  justifies  the  proposal  of  any  seri- 
ously conceived  plan  which  claims  to  rest  on  scientific  principles. 

34.    SOME   FALLACIES  WITH   REGARD   TO   IMMIGRATION1 

I  thoroughly  concur  in  the  opinion  of  Professor  Fairchild  2  that 
an  agreement  regarding  the  evils  to  be  remedied  should  be  sought 
before  discussing  remedial  measures.  For  this  reason  I  shall  con- 
fine myself  to  examining  the  "  chief  objections  to  the  present 
immigration  situation  "  as  stated  in  the  first  part  of  his  paper. 

1  By  Walter  F.  Willcox.  Adapted  from  the  American  Economic  Review  Supple- 
ment, March,  1912,  pp.  66-71.  2  See  p.  387. 


396  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

i .  His  first  objection  is  that  of  numbers.  We  are  told  that  "  a 
million  a  year  ...  is  more  than  this  country  can  safely  look  after." 

In  only  four  of  the  ten  years  1900-1910  did  the  reported  num- 
ber of  immigrants  exceed  one  million.  The  ten-year  total  was  less 
than  8,800,000,  or  an  annual  average  of  seven  eighths  of  a  million. 
But  this  does  not  exclude  those  leaving  our  shores.  For  the  last 
three  years  of  the  decade  the  number  of  departing  aliens  was  ascer- 
tained and  by  deducting  them  from  the  alien  arrivals  the  Bureau 
approximates  the  net  annual  increase  due  to  immigration.  That 
net  increase  was  only  61  per  cent  of  the  gross  immigration.  If 
we  assume  that  the  net  increase  from  immigration  during  the 
whole  decade  1900-1910  bore  the  same  relation  to  the  number 
of  immigrants,  then  the  net  additions  during  the  decade  would 
be  5,365,000,  or  about  536,000  a  year. 

The  net  addition  due  to  ten  years  of  immigration  may  also  be 
estimated  in  another  way  from  the  results  of  the  last  two  censuses. 
In  1900  there  were  ten  and  one-third  million  residents  of  the 
United  States  who  had  been  born  in  foreign  countries,  nearly  99 
per  cent  of  whom  were  white.  The  death  rate  in  1900  of  about 
two  thirds  of  these,  that  is,  the  foreign-born  whites  residing  in  the 
registration  area,  is  known.  It  was  19.4  per  1000.  If  the  num- 
ber of  foreign-born  in  the  United  States  in  1900  be  multiplied 
by  this  death  rate,  the  estimated  deaths  subtracted,  and  the  same 
process  repeated  nine  times,  the  final  result,  eight  and  one-half 
million,  is  the  estimated  number  of  survivors  in  1910  of  those 
immigrants  who  were  here  in  1900.  The  number  of  foreign-born 
whites  enumerated  in  1910  and  the  total  number  of  negroes,  In- 
dians, Chinese,  and  Japanese  in  the  country  have  been  announced. 
The  number  of  foreign-born  colored  of  each  class  may  be  esti- 
mated by  using  the  per  cent  of  foreign-born  in  that  class  in  1900. 
The  total  foreign-born  then  in  1910  was  fifteen  and  one-half  mil- 
lion. The  difference  between  this  number  and  the  survivors  of 
the  foreign-born  here  in  1900  is  5,000,000.  This  is  a  first  approx- 
imation to  the  net  addition  to  our  population  from  the  immigra- 
tion of  the  decade  1900-1910.  But  these  immigrants  also  have 
suffered  losses  by  death.  I  assume  that  they  have  been  in  the 
country  on  the  average  five  years  and  that  their  death  rate  has 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  397 

been  19.4.  The  number  of  immigrants  requisite  to  leave  5,000,- 
ooo  survivors  at  the  end  of  five  years  would  be  5,5 16,000,  or  552,- 
ooo  a  year.  Thus  one  method  of  estimating  the  net  annual  increase 
from  immigration,  1900-1910,  yields  5  36,000  and  the  other  method 
552,000.  It  seems  safe  to  say  that  it  has  not  been  over  600,000 
and  consequently  that  the  estimate  of  "  a  million  a  year  "  exceeds 
the  probable  number  by  about  two  thirds. 

But  a  country's  power  of  assimilation  might  be  held  to  vary, 
other  things  equal,  with  its  population.  If  we  compare  the  net 
immigration  during  the  last  decade  as  just  estimated  with  the 
population  of  the  country  in  1900,  the  resulting  ratio  of  72  im- 
migrants to  each  1000  total  population,  although  greater  than 
the  ratio  of  gross  immigration  to  population  in  the  preceding 
decade,  was  less  than  that  ratio  in  any  decade  of  the  half  century 
between  1840  and  1890.  During  the  decades  1841-1850  and 
1851-1860  there  were  probably  very  few  birds  of  passage,  and 
gross  and  net  immigration  must  have  been  nearly  identical.  Rela- 
tive to  the  population  of  this  country  the  net  immigration  into  the 
United  States,  1900-1910,  was  less  than  the  gross  immigration  in 
the  decades  1841-1850,  1851-1860,  or  1881-1890  and  about  the 
same  as  the  gross  immigration  in  1861-1870  and  1871-1880. 

2.  Another  of  these  eight  objections  is  that  "  the  immigrants 
are  poorly  assimilated  or  not  assimilated  at  all."  Here  I  would 
ask  for  the  evidence.  But  not  content  with  that,  may  I  offer  one 
or  two  opposing  considerations  ?  In  1890  among  the  foreign-born 
whites  at  least  ten  years  of  age  15.6  per  cent  were  reported  as 
unable  to  speak  English  ;  in  1900  the  proportion  had  fallen  to 
12.2  per  cent.  Perhaps  the  quality  of  our  English  is  being 
debased,  but  in  that  decade  at  least  we  were  not  becoming  a  more 
polyglot  people  as  the  result  of  immigration.1 

1  The  Census  of  1910  shows  that  2,953,011  foreign-born  whites  in  this  country 
could  not  speak  English.  This  is  22.8  per  cent  of  the  total  foreign-born  white 
population,  as  against  the  12.2  per  cent  in  1900.  The  percentages  in  some  indi- 
vidual states  are  as  follows:  West  Virginia,  55.2;  New  Mexico.  54.4;  Arizona, 
54.1;  Texas,  51.5;  Florida,  42.8  ;  Pennsylvania,  36.6  ;  Delaware,  32.8  ;  Ohio, 30. 6; 
Indiana.  29.6;  New  Jersey,  25.0;  Illinois,  22.7  ;  New  York,  22.1  ;  Wisconsin,  20.9. 
At  the  present  time  we  certainly  are  becoming  "a  more  polyglot  people  as  the  re- 
sult of  immigration."  These  data  apply  to  persons  ten  years  of  age  and  over. —  ED. 


398  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

There  were  nearly  six  and  one-half  million  persons  of  foreign 
birth  in  the  United  States  in  1900  who  had  come  from  countries 
where  English  was  not  spoken.  Of  these  more  than  four  fifths 
(81.2  per  cent)  were  reported  as  able  to  speak  English.  The 
number  unable  to  speak  English  was  about  equal,  apparently,  to 
the  number  who  had  come  from  a  country  where  English  was  not 
spoken  and  had  been  in  the  United  States  less  than  eight  years. 
In  other  words,  it  takes  an  immigrant  who  cannot  speak  English 
when  he  arrives  apparently  about  eight  years  on  the  average  to 
learn  enough  of  the  language  to  claim  that  he  speaks  it.  In  the 
second  generation  the  process  is  practically  completed,  for,  if  my 
estimates  are  correct,  nearly  99  per  cent  of  the  children  born  in 
this  country  of  immigrants  from  countries  where  English  is  not 
spoken  and  at  least  ten  years  old  in  1900  claimed  to  speak  English. 

These  inferences,  be  it  remembered,  are  drawn  from  a  census 
now  eleven  years  old.  Since  1900  the  pendulum  may  have  been 
moving  in  the  opposite  direction,  but  about  that  we  cannot  speak 
with  confidence.1 

Much  fear  has  been  expressed  lest  our  immigrants  should  lower 
the  level  of  general  education.  The  illiteracy  of  most  illiterate 
immigrants  is  a  characteristic  of  the  country  from  which  they 
come  and  not  primarily  of  the  persons.  So  far  as  census  figures 
tell,  the  class  with  the  smallest  proportion  of  illiterates  is  the 
children  of  our  immigrants.  Thus  among  the  children  ten  to 
fourteen  years  of  age  born  of  our  native  white  stock  44  in  1000 
[22  in  1000,  in  1910]  cannot  write;  among  the  children  of  our 
immigrants  of  the  same  age  only  9  in  1000  cannot  write  [6  in 
;  1000,  in  1910].  No  doubt  this  is  due  largely  to  the  fact  that  both 
/  immigrants  and  schools  are  more  abundant  in  the  North  than  in 
the  South  and  in  the  cities  than  in  the  country.  But  who  shall  say 
that  the  immigrants  do  not  avoid  the  South  and  the  country  dis- 
tricts largely  because  they  desire  for  themselves  and  above  all 
for  their  children  the  educational  advantages  and  other  oppor- 
tunities which  are  still  found  mainly  in  our  cities  and  our  northern 
states  ?  I  do  not  believe  that  our  immigrants  as  a  class  need  the 

1  The  Census  of  1910  does  not  tabulate  the  number  of  native-born  of  foreign 
parentage  who  cannot  speak  English. —  ED. 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  399 

help  or  the  interference  of  government.  Many  of  them  have 
come  to  this  country  to  escape  a  well-meant  but  fretting  and 
harmful  control  on  the  part  of  those  in  power. 

3.  I  come  now  to  consider  the  statement  that  "immigration 
seriously  increases  the  amount  of  pauperism  and  crime  in  the 
United  States."  I  grant  that  the  13,000,000  foreign-born  add  to 
the  amount  of  pauperism  and  crime.  To  make  an  effective  argu- 
ment the  word  amount  should  be  changed  to  proportion  and  I  as- 
sume that  this  is  meant.  Do  the  foreign-born  population  contribute 
disproportionately  to  the  crime  and  pauperism  of  the  country  ? 

There  is  little  time  to  go  into  the  evidence  on  this  point.  I  may 
say,  however,  that  I  have  found  nothing  to  prove  that  the  foreign- 
born  contribute  more  largely  to  the  almshouse  population  or  the 
prison  population  than  do  the  native  whites  of  the  same  sex  and 
age  residing  in  the  same  part  of  the  country.  What  indirect 
evidence  there  is  points  in  the  other  way.  Certainly  a  proper 
allowance  for  the  lower  average  income  of  the  foreign-born  would 
sufficiently  explain  a  slight  tendency,  and  if  there  is  any  tendency 
of  the  sort  I  believe  it  to  be  a  slight  one,  towards  a  larger  pro- 
portion of  foreign-born  in  the  almshouse  population  than  in  the 
population  outside.  As  to  crime,  when  attention  is  confined  to 
major  or  serious  offenses,  the  proportion  of  foreign-born  whites 
committed  to  prison  is  almost  exactly  the  same  as  the  proportion 
of  native  whites  of  the  same  age. 

The  objections  that  immigration  is  created  or  fostered  from 
motives  of  private  gain,  that  many  immigrants  enter  the  country 
as  conscious  lawbreakers,  and  that  immigration  is  of  no  benefit 
to  foreign  nations  must  be  passed  for  lack  of  time. 

Lastly,  a  word  regarding  the  objection  that  the  immigrants  are 
poorly  distributed.  The  results  of  the  preceding  census  I  exam- 
ined in  an  article  on  "  The  Distribution  of  Immigrants,"  the 
main  conclusions  of  which  still  seem  to  me  sound.  But  doubtless 
they  will  not  apply  without  considerable  modification  to  the  widely 
different  conditions  of  the  following  decade.  The  distribution 
of  the  foreign-born,  like  that  of  the  native  population,  is  deter- 
mined by  the  interplay  of  motives,  largely  economic,  inviting  to  a 
change  of  residence,  and  other  motives,  among  which  human 


466 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


inertia  is  important,  leading  to  a  retention  of  the  present  abode. 
The  foreign-born  population  is  probably  more  migratory  within  the 
country  than  the  native  population,  and  responds  more  quickly 
to  the  suggestions  of  economic  or  other  advantage.  On  the  other 
hand,  this  class  probably  has  fewer  and  less  trustworthy  sources 
of  information  than  the  native  population.  I  see  little  objection 
to  the  government's  gathering  reports  and  disseminating  news 
for  the  purpose  of  aiding  in  the  wise  distribution  of  our  popula- 
tion whether  native  or  of  foreign  birth,  but  I  do  not  anticipate 
much  effect  from  such  governmental  activities.  On  the  other  hand, 
to  abandon  our  traditional  policy  of  allowing  free  migration  within 
the  country,  to  substitute  for  it  a  policy  of  forced  migration  and 
apparently  of  compulsory  residence  at  the  spot  assigned,  to  apply 
this  new  policy  to  our  foreign-born  residents  and  not  to  the  natives, 
seems  to  me  a  most  dangerous  solution  of  a  difficulty  that  is 
largely  imaginary.  What  is  the  evidence  that  it  is  not  to  the 
advantage  of  our  recent  immigrants  to  stay  as  long  as  they  do  in 
the  northeastern  states  and  the  large  cities  where  people  of  their 
own  kind  are  congregated  and  can  help  far  more  effectively  than 
the  government  their  first  steps  towards  American  citizenship  ? l 

1  The  following  table,  compiled  from  the  Census  of  1910  (Vol.  I,  p.  163),  is  of 
interest  because  it  shows  not  only  the  broad  changes  in  the  distribution  of  foreign- 
born  white  and  children  of  foreign-born  white,  but  also  the  heavy  percentage 
these  two  classes,  taken  together,  constitute  of  the  total  white  population  : 

PERCENTAGE  OF  THE   TOTAL  WHITE    POPULATION   CONSTITUTED   BY 
THE  FOREIGN-HORN  WHITE  AND  THE   NATIVE-BORN  WHITE  OF  FOR- 
EIGN OR  MIXED   PARENTAGE,  1S90.  1900.  AND  1910 


1910 

1900 

1890 

United  States      .               

?O.-t 

*8.7 

57.=; 

New  England      

^'1.7 

S4.6 

47'7 

Middle  Atlantic  .     . 

;  ;  2 

^  I.O 

48  -> 

East  North  Central      

4v6 

a6.o 

West  North  Central     

43.8 

42.4 

South  Atlantic     

8.0 

East  South  Central      

6.2 

6.9 

West  South  Central     

14.2 

iv6 

16.0 

Mountain    .          

41.8 

4  v9 

46.2 

Pacific    

17  6 

4Q.2 

40.4 

The  concentration  in  the  northeastern  states  is  apparent.  —  Eu. 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  40! 

The  one  serious  objection  to  present  immigration  is  its  menace 
to  American  standards  of  wages  and  of  living.  The  cost  of  rear- 
ing children  in  the  United  States  is  rapidly  rising.  In  many, 
perhaps  in  most,  cases  it  is  simpler,  speedier,  and  cheaper  to  im- 
port labor  than  to  breed  it.  The  arguments  in  favor  of  restric- 
tion for  this  reason  are  strengthening  with  the  increasing  cost  of 
living  and  of  rearing  children.  The  time  may  have  come  for  more 
radical  methods  of  restriction.  In  that  case  a  heavy  increase  of 
the  head  tax  so  as  to  make  the  cost  of  producing  laborers  in 
other  countries  and  importing  them  into  the  United  States  more 
nearly  equal  to  what  it  now  costs  to  rear  children  for  the  labor 
market  in  the  United  States  itself  seems  to  me  the  simplest  and 
best  method  of  protecting  our  wage-earning  class  from  debasing 
competition. 

35.  AN  ARGUMENT  AGAINST   RESTRICTION   OF 
IMMIGRATION1 

The  claim  is  often  made  that  we  have  an  oversupply  of  un- 
skilled labor  in  this  country  to-day,  and  the  report  of  the  Immi- 
gration Commission  is  often  invoked  as  establishing  this  fact,  but 
its  investigations,  as  distinguished  from  a  few  unjustified  conclu- 
sions, make  quite  uniformly  in  favor  of  immigration.  The  Commis- 
sion did  not  find  that  wages  have  decreased,  but  the  contrary, 
though  it  claimed  that  employment  is  not  uniform,  and  that  Amer- 
ican standards  of  living  are  supposed  to  be  in  danger.  Neither 
assumption  seems  warranted.  Substantially  all  the  field  work  of  the 
Commission,  on  which  these  inferences  were  based,  was  conducted 
in  1907-1908  in  the  midst  of  the  panic,  when  employment  was 
slack,  proving  nothing.  Nor  is  the  bituminous  coal-mine  industry 
of  western  Pennsylvania,  where  confirmation  for  this  theory  was 
sought,  at  all  typical,  although  even  there,  despite  the  abnormal 
conditions,  wages  did  not  decrease.  Affirmative  action  by  States 
is  doubtless  called  for,  to  improve  housing  and  other  conditions, 
particularly  at  such  interior  points,  for  the  Commission  reported 

1  By  Max  J.  Kohler.  Adapted  from  the  American  Economic  Review  Supplement, 
March,  1912,  pp.  74-78. 


402  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

that  in  the  large  congested  cities,  where  most  of  the  evils  of  im- 
migration were  expected  to  be  encountered,  there  were  relatively 
slight  signs  of  overcrowding,  poor  housing  and  low  standards  of 
living,  thanks  largely  to  recent  tenement-house  reform,  improved 
transit  facilities,  civic  reform  and  the  like,  there.  It  is  a  remark- 
able fact  that  the  representatives  in  Congress  of  the  so-called 
congested  sections,  which  are  supposed  to  be  experiencing  most 
\f  UL,  acutely  the  evils  of  immigration,  such  as  New  York,  Philadel- 
phia, Baltimore,  Chicago,  and  even  parts  of  Boston,  are  almost 
unanimously  opposed  to  restrictive  legislation.  The  opposition  to 
immigration  comes  almost  wholly  from  New  England,  and  the 
South  and  other  sparsely  settled  sections  with  few  immigrant 
settlers.  The  anti-immigration  feeling  has  been  largely  artificially 
stimulated. 

In  fact,  the  immigrant  laborer  is  indispensable  to  our  eco- 
nomic progress  to-day,  and  we  can  rely  upon  no  one  else  to 
build  our  houses,  railroads,  and  subways,  and  mine  our  ores 
for  us.  The  effect  of  immigration  upon  native  labor  has,  more- 
over, been  well  described  as  "  forcing  the  American  laborer  up, 
not  down." 

Nor  is  inaction  in  the  matter  of  new  legislation  deciding  against 
restriction.  Our  laws  at  present  exclude  the  physically  and  morally 
diseased,  the  paupers  and  those  likely  to  become  paupers,  the 
anarchist,  and  the  contract  laborer.  During  the  fiscal  year  1910 
an  army  of  over  24,000  were  actually  deported  after  arriving  here, 
while  the  Immigration  Commission  reports  that  fully  four  times 
as  many  are  barred  abroad  annually  on  applying  for  tickets,  as 
a  result  of  the  medical  examinations  there,  and  incalculable  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  more  are  prevented  annually  from  immigrat- 
ing by  such  reports.  Nor  is  it  true  that  the  annual  increase  of 
immigration  is  approximately  a  million  a  year,  for  the  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  departing  aliens  are  ignored.  In  fact,  as  Secre- 
tary Straus  well  pointed  out,  our  immigration  stream  is  largely 
self-regulating,  decreasing  with  bad  times  here,  both  with  respect 
to  decrease  of  the  incoming  tide  and  increase  of  the  outgoing 
stream  of  aliens.  The  enormous  alien  immigration  of  1907  of 
1,285,000  persons  fell  in  the  fiscal  year  1908  to  782,870  alien 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  403 

immigrant  arrivals,  while  395,073  immigrant  aliens  departed.  The 
number  of  net  arrivals  was  approximately  only  500,000  for  191 1.1 
Particular  suggested  expedients  for  restriction  are  all  either 
objectionable  and  dangerous,  or  useless.-  Chief  of  these  is  the  so- 
called  literacy  test.  The  able  veto  message  of  President  Cleveland 
of  a  similar  bill  in  1897  'still  contains  convincing  arguments 
against  this  expedient,  while  Secretary  Nagel,  the  head  of  the 
Department  of  Commerce  and  Labor,  has  publicly  disapproved 
of  it,  as  did  also  his  predecessor,  Secretary  Straus,  and  leaders  of 
public  opinion  like  President  Eliot,  President  Schurman,  Carl 
Schurz,  and  others.  It  would  penalize  those  unfortunately 
deprived  of  schooling  abroad,  who  often  are  the  chief  victims 
of  intolerable  persecution,  and  rush  to  seize  our  superior  oppor- 
tunities for  education  here,  immediately  after  arrival.  We  have 
properly  forbidden  the  naturalization  of  the  unlettered,  but  that 
prohibition  should  not  apply  to  immigration.  Moreover,  it  would 
arbitrarily  exclude  the  manual  labor  which  we  need  most,  and 
which  our  own  country  does  not  adequately  supply.  During  the 
fiscal  year  1910,  300,000  of  our  alien  immigrants  out  of  the 
million  arrivals  were,  for  example,  farmers  and  farm  laborers, 
besides  their  wives  and  young  children.  It  requires  no  argument 
to  show  that  a  man  with  book  learning  is  not  likely  to  take  up 
farm  labor,  so  that  a  very  large  number  of  farm  laborers  —  whom 
we  need  most  —  would  be  the  first  to  be  excluded  by  such  a  law. 
Time  does  not  permit  considering  all  the  other  suggested  modes 
of  restriction ;  they  would  be  oppressive,  yet  easily  evadable. 
The  plans  to  exclude  unskilled  laborers  unaccompanied  by  wives 
or  families,  and  to  levy  the  head  tax  so  as  to  discriminate  in  favor 
of  men  accompanied  by  their  families,  would  be  unjust  and  unwise, 
and  would  tend  to  supersede  the  present  salutary  practice  of  hav- 
ing heads  of  families  come  over  in  advance  of  their  families  and 
prepare  a  home  for  them  first,  instead  of  handicapping  themselves 
seriously  thus  at  the  start  in  new  and  untried  surroundings. 

The  proposed  limitation  of  the  number  of  immigrants  of  each 
race  would  be  very  harsh  and  arbitrary,  utterly  un-American,  and 

1  The  net  increase  of  population  by  immigration  was  815,303  in  the  fiscal  year 
ending  June  30,  1913  ;  for  the  year  ending  June  30,  1914,  it  was  769,276.  —  ED. 


404  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

violative  of  nearly  all  our  treaties,  as  well  as  probably  unconsti- 
tutional. The  Immigration  Commission  has  unfortunately  encour- 
aged such  race  discriminations  by  its  treatment  of  the  general 
question  and  some  of  its  -suggested  remedies.  Treaties  welcom- 
ing all  subjects  here  would  be  none  the  less  violated,  because  all 
nations  would  be  thus  discriminated  against.  We  recognized  this 
fact  by  the  veto  of  Chinese  exclusion  acts,  and  the  opposition  to 
Japanese  exclusion,  in  advance  of  international  arrangements 
therefor.  The  question  is,  of  course,  quite  different  from  one 
which  arises  with  respect  to  exclusion  of  inherently  objectionable 
diseased  persons,  paupers,  and  criminals,  under  an  exercise  of  the 
police  power.  The  contention  that  the  new  immigrants  are  less 
easily  assimilable  than  the  old  were,  is  pure  assumption.  It  over- 
looks the  facts  that  we  have  been  rapidly  assimilating  these  very 
immigrants  for  years,  and  similar  objections  were  pressed  in  vain 
against  the  old  immigrants.  Moreover,  our  machinery  for  Amer- 
icanization to-day  is  tenfold  as  great  as  it  was  before  1881,  so  that 
Americanization  takes  place  in  general  more,  not  less,  rapidly, 
than  before,  despite  greater  differences  in  language  and  race  stock. 
Our  newly  established  immigrant-aid  societies,  our  schools  and 
lecture  halls,  our  civic  classes,  our  press,  our  political  organizations 
and  clubs,  our  labor  unions  and  tenement-house  laws  and  laws 
fixing  hours  of  labor,  all  prove  this,  as  James  Bryce  has  just  well 
pointed  out  in  his  new  edition  of  the  American  Commonwealth. 
To  attempt,  in  the  light  of  these  facts,  to  establish  relative 
standards  of  race  value,  to  the  detriment  of  the  new  immigration, 
is  purely  unwarranted  assumption,  especially  in  the  light  of  Pro- 
fessor Boas'  interesting  demonstration  that  even  the  most  pro- 
nounced physical  indication  of  race  differences,  the  shape  of  the 
skull,  is  rapidly  lost  by  immigrants  born  here.  Until  recently,  par- 
ticularly in  this  country,  dating  its  history  from  the  signing  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  Burke's  famous  statement  was  ac- 
cepted with  respect  to  attempting  to  draw  an  indictment  against  a 
whole  people.  Such  pseudoscience  was  ably  ridiculed  by  Profes- 
sor Royce,  in  his  study  of  "  Race  Questions  and  Provincialism," 
as  dignifying  race  antipathies  by  giving  them  names,  and  then  re- 
garding the  antipathies  named  as  sacred  because  they  have  a  name. 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  405 

To  conclude,  then,  it  is  submitted  that  nothing  justifies  the  view 
that  we  should  depart  from  our  open-door  policy  which  Jefferson 
so  ably  advocated  in  his  message  of  1801  by  the  famous  rhetorical 
question  :  "  Shall  oppressed  humanity  find  no  asylum  on  this 
globe  ?  "  If  our  true  interests  demanded  further  restriction,  all 
loyal  Americans  should  support  such  demands,  but  it  still  re- 
mains true  in  the  language  of  the  poet :  "It  blesseth  him  that 
gives  and  him  that  takes  "  welcome  into  this  our  land  of  splen- 
did opportunity ! 

36.  THE   LITERACY  TEST  AS  PROVIDED  FOR  BY  THE  SIXTY- 
THIRD  CONGRESS,   1915,  AND   PRESIDENT  WILSON'S  VETO  * 

The  part  of  the  comprehensive  immigration  bill  which  encoun- 
tered President  Wilson's  strong  opposition  and  occasioned  his 
veto  of  the  whole  bill  is  as  follows  : 

That  after  four  months  from  the  approval  of  this  Act,  in  addition  to  the 
aliens  who  are  by  law  now  excluded  from  admission  into  the  United  States, 
the  following  persons  shall  also  be  excluded  from  admission  thereto,  to  wit : 

All  aliens  over  sixteen  years  of  age,  physically  capable  of  reading,  who  can- 
not read  the  English  language,  or  some  other  language  or  dialect,  including 
Hebrew  or  Yiddish :  Provided,  That  any  admissible  alien  or  any  alien  hereto- 
fore or  hereafter  legally  admitted,  or  any  citizen  of  the  United  States,  may 
bring  in  or  send  for  his  father  or  grandfather  over  fifty-five  years  of  age,  his 
wife,  his  mother,  his  grandmother,  or  his  unmarried  or  widowed  daughter,  if 
otherwise  admissible,  whether  such  relative  can  read  or  not ;  and  such  relative 
shall  be  permitted  to  enter.  That  for  the  purpose  of  ascertaining  whether 
aliens  can  read  the  immigrant  inspectors  shall  be  furnished  with  slips,  of  uni- 
form size,  prepared  under  the  direction  of  the  Secretary  of  Labor,  each  con- 
taining not  less  than  thirty  nor  more  than  forty  words  in  ordinary  use,  printed 
in  plainly  legible  type  in  some  one  of  the  various  languages  and  dialects  of 
immigrants.  Each  alien  may  designate  the  particular  language  or  dialect  in 
which  he  desires  the  examination  to  be  made,  and  shall  be  required  to  read 
the  words  printed  on  the  slip  in  such  language  or  dialect.  That  the  following 
classes  of  persons  shall  be  exempt  from  the  operation  of  the  illiteracy  test,  to 
wit :  All  aliens  who  shall  prove  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  proper  immigration 
officer  or  to  the  Secretary  of  Labor  that  they  emigrated  from  the  country  of 
which  they  were  last  permanent  residents  solely  for  the  purpose  of  escaping 
from  religious  persecution ;  all  aliens  who  have  been  lawfully  admitted  to  the 

1  From  63d  Cong.,  36  Session,  House  Doc.  Xo.  1527,  pp.  2,  3,  7,  8. 


406  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

United  States  and  who  have  resided  therein  continuously  for  five  years,  and 
who  have  in  accordance  with  the  law  declared  their  intention  of  becoming 
citizens  of  the  United  States  and  who  return  to  the  United  States  within  six 
months  from  the  date  of  their  departure  therefrom ;  all  aliens  in  transit  through 
the  United  States ;  all  aliens  who  have  been  lawfully  admitted  to  the  United 
States  and  who  later  shall  go  in  transit  from  one  part  of  the  United  States  to 
another  through  foreign  contiguous  territory :  Provided,  That  nothing  in  this 
Act  shall  exclude,  if  otherwise  admissible,  persons  convicted  of  an  offense 
purely  political,  not  involving  moral  turpitude :  Provided  further,  That  the 
provisions  of  this  Act  relating  to  the  payments  for  tickets  or  passage  by  any 
corporation,  association,  society,  municipality,  or  foreign  Government  shall  not 
apply  to  the  tickets  or  passage  of  aliens  in  immediate  and  continuous  transit 
through  the  United  States  to  foreign  contiguous  territory:  Provided  further, 
That  skilled  labor,  if  otherwise  admissible,  may  be  imported  if  labor  of  like 
kind  unemployed  cannot  be  found  in  this  country,  and  the  question  of  the 
necessity  of  importing  such  skilled  labor  in  any  particular  instance  may  be 
determined  by  the  Secretary  of  Labor  upon  the  application  of  any  person 
interested,  such  application  to  be  made  before  such  importation,  and  such 
determination  by  the  Secretary  of  Labor  to  be  reached  after  a  full  hearing  and 
an  investigation  into  the  facts  of  the  case :  Provided  further,  That  the  pro- 
visions of  this  law  applicable  to  contract  labor  shall  not  be  held  to  exclude 
professional  actors,  artists,  lecturers,  singers,  ministers  of  any  religious  denom- 
ination, professors  for  colleges  or  seminaries,  persons  belonging  to  any  recog- 
nized learned  profession,  or  persons  employed  strictly  as  personal  or  domestic 
servants :  Provided  further,  That  whenever  the  President  shall  be  satisfied 
that  passports  issued  by  any  foreign  Government  to  its  citizens  or  subjects  to 
go  to  any  country  other  than  the  United  States,  or  to  any  insular  possession 
of  the  United  States  or  to  the  Canal  Zone,  are  being  used  for  the  purpose  of 
enabling  the  holder  to  come  to  the  continental  territory  of  the  United  States 
to  the  detriment  of  labor  conditions  therein,  the  President  shall  refuse  to  permit 
such  citizens  or  subjects  of  the  country  issuing  such  passports  to  enter  the  con- 
tinental territory  of  the  United  States  from  such  other  country  or  from  such 
insular  possessions  or  from  the  Canal  Zone:  Provided  further,  That  aliens 
who  have  declared  their  intention  to  become  citizens  may  be  admitted  in  the 
discretion  of  the  Secretary  of  Labor,  and  under  such  conditions  as  he  may  pre- 
scribe:  Provided  further,  That  nothing  in  the  contract-labor  or  reading-test 
provisions  of  this  Act  shall  be  construed  to  prevent,  hinder,  or  restrict  any 
alien  exhibitor,  or  holder  of  concession  or  privilege  for  any  fair  or  exposition 
authorized  by  Act  of  Congress,  from  bringing  into  the  United  States,  under 
contract,  such  otherwise  admissible  alien  mechanics,  artisans,  agents,  or  other 
employees,  natives  of  his  country,  as  may  be  necessary  for  installing  or  con- 
ducting his  exhibit  or  for  preparing  for  installing  or  conducting  any  business 
authorized  or  permitted  under  any  concession  or  privilege  which  may  have  been 
or  may  be  granted  by  any  such  fair  or  exposition  in  connection  therewith, 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  407 

under  such  rules  and  regulations  as  the  Commissioner  General  of  Immigra- 
tion, with  the  approval  of  the  Secretary  of  Labor,  may  prescribe  both  as 
to  the  admission  and  return  of  such  persons :  Provided  further,  That  noth- 
ing in  this  Act  shall  be  construed  to  apply  to  accredited  officials  of  foreign 
Governments,  nor  to  their  suites,  families,  or  guests. 

President  Wilson's  veto  message  follows  : 
To  THE  HOUSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES  : 

It  is  with  unaffected  regret  that  I  find  myself  constrained  by 
clear  conviction  to  return  this  bill  (H.  R.  6060,  "An  act  to  reg- 
ulate the  immigration  of  aliens  to  and  the  residence  of  aliens  in 
the  United  States  ")  without  my  signature.  Not  only  do  I  feel  it 
to  be  a  very  serious  matter  to  exercise  the  power  of  veto  in  any 
case,  because  it  involves  opposing  the  single  judgment  of  the 
President  to  the  judgment  of  a  majority  of  both  the  Houses  of 
the  Congress,  a  step  which  no  man  who  realizes  his  own  liability  to 
error  can  take  without  great  hesitation,  but  also  because  this  par- 
ticular bill  is  in  so  many  important  respects  admirable,  well  con- 
ceived, and  desirable.  Its  enactment  into  law  would  undoubtedly 
enhance  the  efficiency  and  improve  the  methods  of  handling  the 
important  branch  of  the  public  service  to  which  it  relates.  But 
candor  and  a  sense  of  duty  with  regard  to  the  responsibility  so 
clearly  imposed  upon  me  by  the  Constitution  in  matters  of 
legislation  leave  me  no  choice  but  to  dissent. 

In  two  particulars  of  vital  consequence  this  bill  embodies  a 
radical  departure  from  the  traditional  and  long-established  policy 
of  this  country,  a  policy  in  which  our  people  have  conceived  the 
very  character  of  their  Government  to  be  expressed,  the  very 
mission  and  spirit  of  the  Nation  in  respect  of  its  relations  to  the 
peoples  of  the  world  outside  their  borders.  It  seeks  to  all  but 
close  entirely  the  gates  of  asylum  which  have  always  been  open 
to  those  who  could  find  nowhere  else  the  right  and  opportunity 
of  constitutional  agitation  for  what  they  conceived  to  be  the 
natural  and  inalienable  rights  of  men ;  and  it  excludes  those  to 
whom  the  opportunities  of  elementary  education  have  been 
denied,  without  regard  to  their  character,  their  purposes,  or 
their  natural  capacity. 


408  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Restrictions  like  these,  adopted  earlier  in  our  history  as  a 
Nation,  would  very  materially  have  altered  the  course  and  cooled 
the  humane  ardors  of  our  politics.  The  right  of  political  asylum 
has  brought  to  this  country  many  a  man  of  noble  character  and 
elevated  purpose  who  was  marked  as  an  outlaw  in  his  own  less 
fortunate  land,  and  who  has  yet  become  an  ornament  to  our 
citizenship  and  to  our  public  councils.  The  children  and  the 
compatriots  of  these  illustrious  Americans  must  stand  amazed  to 
see  the  representatives  of  their  Nation  now  resolved,  in  the  full- 
ness of  our  national  strength  and  at  the  maturity  of  our  great 
institutions,  to  risk  turning  such  men  back  from  our  shores  with- 
out test  of  quality  or  purpose.  It  is  difficult  for  me  to  believe 
that  the  full  effect  of  this  feature  of  the  bill  was  realized  when 
it  was  framed  and  adopted,  and  it  is  impossible  for  me  to  assent 
to  it  in  the  form  in  which  it  is  here  cast. 

The  literacy  test  and  the  tests  and  restrictions  which  accom- 
pany it  constitute  an  even  more  radical  change  in  the  policy  of 
the  Nation.  Hitherto  we  have  generously  kept  our  doors  open  to 
all  who  were  not  unfitted  by  reason  of  disease  or  incapacity  for 
self-support  or  such  personal  records  and  antecedents  as  were 
likely  to  make  them  a  menace  to  our  peace  and  order  or  to  the 
wholesome  and  essential  relationships  of  life.  In  this  bill  it  is 
proposed  to  turn  away  from  tests  of  character  and  of  quality  and 
impose  tests  which  exclude  and  restrict ;  for  the  new  tests  here 
embodied  are  not  tests  of  quality  or  of  character  or  of  personal 
fitness,  but  tests  of  opportunity.  Those  who  come  seeking  oppor- 
tunity are  not  to  be  admitted  unless  they  have  already  had  one  of 
the  chief  of  the  opportunities  they  seek,  the  opportunity  of  educa- 
tion. The  object  of  such  provisions  is  restriction,  not  selection. 

If  the  people  of  this  country  have  made  up  their  minds  to 
limit  the  number  of  immigrants  by  arbitrary  tests  and  so  reverse 
the  policy  of  all  the  generations  of  Americans  that  have  gone 
before  them,  it  is  their  right  to  do  so.  I  am  their  servant  and 
have  no  license  to  stand  in  their  way.  But  I  do  not  believe  that 
they  have.  I  respectfully  submit  that  no  one  can  quote  their 
mandate  to  that  effect.  lias  any  political  party  ever  avowed  a 
policy  of  restriction  in  this  fundamental  matter,  gone  to  the 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  409 

country  on  it,  and  been  commissioned  to  control  its  legislation  ? 
Does  this  bill  rest  upon  the  conscious  and  universal  assent  and 
desire  of  the  American  people  ?  I  doubt  it.  It  is  because  I  doubt 
it  that  I  make  bold  to  dissent  from  it.  I  am  willing  to  abide  by 
the  verdict,  but  not  until  it  has  been  rendered.  Let  the  platforms 
of  parties  speak  out  upon  this  policy  and  the  people  pronounce 
their  wish.  The  matter  is  too  fundamental  to  be  settled  otherwise. 
I  have  no  pride  of  opinion  in  this  question.  I  am  not  foolish 
enough  to  profess  to  know  the  wishes  and  ideals  of  America 
better  than  the  body  of  her  chosen  representatives  know  them. 
I  only  want  instruction  direct  from  those  whose  fortunes,  with 

ours  and  all  men's,  are  involved. 

WOODROW  WILSON 
THE  WHITE  HOUSE,  28  January,  1915 

V 

37.    THE  PROBLEM  OF  ORIENTAL  IMMIGRATION1 

Many  think  that  this  problem  is  permanently  settled  by  the 
present  Chinese  exclusion  laws  and  the  "gentlemen's  agreement" 
with  Japan.  They  little  realize,  however,  that  this  exclusion  policy 
can  be  nothing  more  than  a  temporary  makeshift  and  that  even 
now  it  is  serving  to  aggravate  the  relations  between  America  and 
the  Orient. 

The  policy  is  fundamentally  wrong.  In  the  first  place,  it  is 
humiliating  to  Asiatics.  Exclusion,  entirely  on  the  basis  of  race, 
contradicts  the  most  fundamental  characteristics  of  human  nature, 
the  sense  of  intrinsic  manhood,  worth,  and  rights.  The  natural 
and  entirely  justifiable  self-respect  of  Chinese,  Japanese,  and 
Hindu  is  affronted.  So  long  as  they  are  nationally  helpless, 
we  may  indeed  feel  no  ill  results  from  this  policy  ;  but  when 
China  becomes  as  completely  westernized  and  armed  as  Japan  is 
to-day,  China  will  insist,  as  Japan  insists,  that  we  accord  Asiatics 
equality  of  treatment  with  that  granted  to  aliens  of  other  lands. 

That  Chinese  are  capable  of  action  on  entirely  sentimental 
and  humanitarian  grounds,  the  "Chinese  boycott"  of  1905-1906 
proves.  American  merchants  suffered  the  loss  of  millions  of 

1  By  Sidney  L.  Gulick.  Adapted  from  the  Survey,  March  7,  1914,  pp.  720-722, 
73°,  73i- 


410  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

dollars  of  trade  entirely  because  of  the  resentment  felt  by  Chinese 
merchants  because  of  the  humiliating  treatment  inflicted  on 
Chinese  entering  the  port  of  San  Francisco.  If  we  wish  to 
retain  and  develop  to  its  utmost  our  trade  with  the  Orient  we 
must  treat  Asiatics  on  a  basis  of  friendship  and  honor,  in  har- 
mony with  their  dignity  and  self-respect. 

The  Asiatic-exclusion  policy  is  also  an  economic  blunder.  For 
it  erects  an  artificial  protection  for  our  people  which  cannot  be 
permanently  maintained,  and  the  longer  it  is  maintained  the  more 
serious  will  be  the  consequences  when  it  does  break  down. 

Japan  tried  the  exclusion  policy  for  two  hundred  and  fifty 
years.  It  resulted  in  such  an  absence  of  the  normal  stimulus  of 
international  life,  that  when  she  was  no  longer  able  to  maintain 
her  policy  of  exclusion,  she  found  herself  in  a  most  pitiable 
plight.  She  was  hopelessly  out-distanced  by  all  the  great  nations 
of  the  West.  Inner  turmoil  and .  finally  revolution  were  her  lot 
before  she  could  adjust  herself  to  the  new  world-situation.  Even 
fifty  years  of  the  most  strenuous  effort  have  not  enabled  her  people 
to  catch  up  fully  with  the  nations  of  the  West. 

The  policy  of  Asiatic  exclusion,  moreover,  promotes  among  the 
whites  increasing  Asiatic  antipathy,  fear,  and  suspicion,  and  this 
evokes  the  same  attitude  toward  the  whites  on  the  part  of 
Asiatics.  This  policy,  therefore,  increases  both  the  yellow  and 
the  white  perils,  and  must  inevitably  produce  increasing  milita- 
rism in  both  East  and  West,  which  in  time  will  bring  disastrous 
consequences  to  the  political,  industrial,  and  commercial  life  of 
both  races. 

But  what  other  possible  policy  is  there  for  us  than  that  of 
Asiatic  exclusion  ?  If  we  opened  our  doors  as  freely  to  Asiatic  as 
to  European  immigration,  should  we  not  be  completely  swamped 
in  a  decade  or  two  ?  Would  not  our  entire  economic  situation  be 
hopelessly  ruined  ?  Could  our  democratic  institutions  stand  the 
strain  ?  \Vould  not  the  low  scale  of  Asiatic  life,  with  its  accom- 
panying ignorance  and  despotism,  be  forced  upon  us  ?  Is  not 
Asiatic  exclusion  the  only  way  to  meet  these  dangers  ? 

Here  we  come  upon  the  fundamental  fallacy  of  the  exclu- 
sion policy.  It  rests  on  the  assumption  that  there  are  only  two 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  411 

possibilities  —  complete  exclusion  or  complete  surrender.  The 
maintenance  of  our  civilization,  it  is  argued,  depends  on  the 
former.  The  adoption  of  the  latter  means  complete  collapse  of 
the  white  man's  standards  and  ideals. 

There  is,  nevertheless,  a  third  course  possible  —  a  course  which 
conserves  the  great  interests  of  Occidental  civilization,  and  at  the 
same  time  accords  to  the  Asiatic  a  treatment  not  only  in  harmony 
with  his  self-respect  and  dignity,  but  that  also  promotes  Asiatic 
adoption  of  our  ideals  and  our  standards  of  life. 

In  proportion  as  Asia's  millions  adopt  these,  the  severity  of  the 
Asiatic  economic  competition  will  be  diminished,  their  purchasing 
power  will  be  enhanced,  and  the  free  interrelation  of  East  and 
West  will  become  possible,  to  the  inestimable  advantage  of  both. 

The  full  discussion  of  this  question  is  of  course  beyond  the 
scope  of  a  single  article.  Even  a  volume  I  have  found  all 
too  brief  for  the  presentation  of  the  numberless  factors  and 
considerations  involved. 

First  of  all,  I  wish  to  say  that  I  am  in  hearty  agreement  with 
the  fundamental  postulate  of  California's  general  Oriental  policy. 
An  immigration  from  Asia,  swamping  the  white  man,  overturning 
the  democratic  institutions  of  the  Pacific  coast  and  ultimately  of 
all  America,  or  bringing  wide  economic  disaster  to  Caucasian 
laborers  and  farmers,  is  not  for  a  moment  to  be  tolerated.  Cali- 
fornia is  right  in  her  general  policy.  She  is  nevertheless  wrong  in 
her  mode  of  applying  that  policy.  Right  in  principle  —  wrong 
in  method.  She  seeks  to  settle  what  is  an  international,  nay,  a 
universal  problem  in  the  light  of  exclusively  local  interests. 

Her  solution  in  fact  aggravates  the  difficulty,  for  it  ignores 
pertinent  facts,  such  as  the  actual  diminution  of  Japanese  resi- 
dents in  America  due  to  the  efficient  administration  by  Japan  of 
the  "gentlemen's  agreement."  It  ignores  also  the  willingness  of 
Japan  to  accede  to  the  fundamental  desire  of  California.  Her 
anti-alien  legislation  which,  as  Attorney-General  Webb  stated, 
"seeks  to  limit  their  (Japanese)  presence  by  curtailing  their 
privileges,  for  they  will  not  come  in  large  numbers  nor  long 
abide  with  us  if  they  may  not  acquire  land  "  —  is  accordingly  need- 
less ;  it  is,  moreover,  humiliating  to  Japan ;  it  is  unscientific, 


412  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

unjust,  short-sighted,  and  contrary  to  the  spirit  and  substance  of 
all  American  treaties  with  Japan. 

The  present  Oriental  policy  of  the  United  States  as  a  whole 
also  is  in  important  respects  humiliating  to  them  and  disgraceful 
to  us.  California's  anti-alien  legislation  really  rests  back  upon  the 
refusal  of  our  federal  government  to  grant  rights  of  American 
citizenship  to  any  individuals  save  those  of  white  ancestry  and 
men  "  of  African  descent." 

Professing  friendship  in  words,  we  deny  it  in  important  deeds. 
Demanding  an  open  door  for  Americans  in  Asia  and  equality  of 
opportunity  for  our  citizens  with  that  accorded  to  citizens  of  the 
"  most  favored  nation,"  we  do  not  ourselves  grant  the  same  to 
Asiatics  in  our  land. 

Here  then  is  a  serious  situation  :  on  the  one  hand,  California, 
conscious  of  a  danger  which  she  believes  threatens  to  reach  vast 
proportions  if  not  radically  and  promptly  dealt  with  ;  on  the  other 
hand,  Japan,  a  nation  with  which  America  secured  and  has 
maintained  exceptional  relations  of  friendship,  deeply  wounded, 
yet  earnestly  desiring  the  maintenance  of  the  historic  friendship 
on  a  basis  of  dignity  and  mutual  profit. 

This  is  a  difficult,  delicate,  and  intricate  problem.  Both  sides  have 
their  measure  of  truth  and  right.  The  problem  is  how  to  harmonize 
these  real  rights  and  interests.  How  is  it  possible  to  grant  what 
California  so  insistently  and  rightly  demands  and  at  the  same 
time  to  secure  to  Japan  what  she  demands  with  equal  insistence  ? 

The  problem,  however,  is  not  so  difficult  as  first  appears.  We 
need  accurate  knowledge  as  to  the  facts,  clear  thinking  as  to 
principles,  the  adoption  of  correct  fundamental  postulates  and  their 
consistent  and  wise  elaboration  into  concrete  policies  and  laws. 

The  new  American  Oriental  policy  must  hold  as  its  major 
premise  the  principles  announced  by  President  Wilson.  He  was 
speaking,  it  is  true,  with  the  South  American  nations  in  view,  but 
the  principles  he  announced  apply  equally  to  the  nations  of  the 
Orient.  As  reported,  he  said  : 

We  must  prove  ourselves  their  friends  and  champions  upon  terms  of  equal- 
ity and  honor.  You  cannot  be  friends  upon  any  other  terms  than  upon  the 
terms  of  equality. 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  413 

You  cannot  be  friends  at  all  except  upon  the  terms  of  honor ;  and  we  must 
show  ourselves  friends  by  comprehending  their  interest,  whether  it  squares 
with  our  interest  or  not. 

Upon  such  principles  consistently  applied,  would  I  found 
America's  new  Oriental  policy. 

America  should  treat  the  Oriental  on  a  basis  of  complete 
equality  with  the  citizens  of  other  races,  granting  to  them  as  to 
the  most  favored  nation,  treatment  even  as  we  give  it  to  others 
and  demand  it  for  ourselves. 

The  policy  needed  is  one  that  shall  conserve  all  the  permanent 
interests  of  California  and  of  the  entire  United  States,  shall  do 
so  in  harmony  with  the  dignity  of  the  peoples  of  the  Orient,  and 
shall  provide  likewise  for  their  permanent  welfare. 

A  new  general  immigration  law  is  needed  which  shall  apply 
impartially  to  all  races.  We  must  abandon  all  differential  Asiatic 
treatment,  even  as  regards  immigration.  The  danger  of  an  over-- 
whelming Oriental  immigration  can  be  obviated  by  a  general  law 
allowing  as  the  maximum  annual  immigration  from  any  land  a 
certain  fixed  percentage  of  those  from  that  land  already  here  and 
naturalized. 

'The  valid  principle  on  which  such  a  law  would  rest  is  the  fact 
that  newcomers  from  any  land  enter  and  become  assimilated  to 
our  life  chiefly  through  the  agency  of  those  from  that  land  already 
here.  These  know  the  languages,  customs,  and  ideals  of  both 
nations.  Consequently,  the  larger  the  number  already  assimilated, 
the  larger  the  number  of  those  who  can  be  wisely  admitted  year 
by  year.  The  same  percentage  rate  would  permit  of  great  differ- 
ences in  actual  numbers  from  different  lands. 

By  way  of  illustrating  this  suggestion,  consider  the  following 
outline  of  a  general  immigration  law. 

The  maximum  number  of  immigrants  in  a  single  year  from  any 
nation,  race  or  group  having  a  single  "  mother  tongue  "  shall  be  : 

Five  per  cent  of  those  from  that  land  already  naturalized  Amer- 
ican citizens,  including  their  American-born  children. 

In  addition  to  these  there  shall  also  be  admitted  from  any  land 
all  who  are  returning  to  America,  having  at  some  previous  time 
had  a  residence  here  of  not  less  than  three  years. 


414  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

All  immediate  dependent  relatives  of  those  who  have  had  a 
residence  here  of  not  less  than  three  years. 

All  who  have  had  an  education  in  their  own  land  equivalent 
to  the  American  high  school,  with  not  less  than  three  years' 
study  of  some  foreign  tongue. 

In  the  application  of  these  provisions,  individuals  who  come  as 
bona  fide  travelers,  government  officials,  students  —  in  a  word,  all 
who  are  provided  for  by  funds  from  their  native  land  —  should  not 
be  counted  as  immigrants  ;  but  merchants,  professionals,  students, 
and  all  others  who,  even  though  not  technically  laborers,  yet  de- 
pend on  their  own  efforts  in  this  land  for  a  living,  should  be  so 
reckoned. 

Applied  to  Germany,  this  5  per  cent  rate  would  admit  as  many 
as  405,000  immigrants,  whereas  only  27,788  entered  in  1912. 
From  Great  Britain  363,500  might  enter,  whereas  82,979  came 
in  that  year.  Russian  immigration  would  be  diminished  from 
162,395  in  1912  to  a  possible  maximum  of  94,000;  while  im- 
migration from  Italy  would  fall  from  157,134  to  54,850.  From 
Japan  220  immigrants  would  be  admitted  and  from  China  738. 

I  am  not  particularly  concerned,  however,  with  defending  the 
5  per  cent  rate  here  suggested.  I  merely  use  it  by  way  of 
illustration.  Those  better  acquainted  with  the  facts  of  immigration 
and  the  speed  of  social  assimilation  must  determine  just  what 
percentage  would  be  wise.  The  present  contention  centers  on  the 
point  that  whatever  the  wise  rate  may  be,  it  should  be  applied 
equally  to  all  races.  This  principle  alone  avoids  the  difficulty  of 
invidious  race  discrimination. 

A  bureau  of  alien  registration  and  education  is  needed  for  the 
supervision  of  the  education  of  all  aliens.  Every  alien  permanently 
residing  in  this  country  should  be  making  steady  preparation  for 
citizenship  ;  that  is,  for  ability  to  live  here  intelligently  and  profit- 
ably both  to  himself  and  to  us.  All  aliens  should  be  required  to 
register  in  this  bureau,  paying  a  substantial  annual  fee  of,  say  $10, 
until  naturalized. 

Graded  courses  of  study  in  American  history,  politics,  civics, 
and  English  should  be  prepared,  as  well  as  some  adequate  presen- 
tation of  the  fundamental  traits  of  American  civilization,  and 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  415 

opportunity  should  be  given  for  annual  examinations,  free  of 
charge.  The  annual  registration  fee  might  be  diminished  with 
each  examination  passed.  Certificates  of  graduation  should  be 
essential  for  naturalization.  Federal  aid  might  be  given  to  States, 
cities,  and  towns  providing  facilities  for  alien  education.  Night 
schools  might  be  opened  in  public-school  buildings.  All  institu- 
tions, such  as  Y.  M.C.A.'s  or  churches  providing  systematic 
education  for  aliens  along  the  lines  of  the  federal  law,  might 
receive  subsidies. 

The  systematic  care  and  education  of  all  aliens  in  America  is 
essential  to  the  welfare  of  the  country,  of  far  more  practical  and 
also  of  pressing  importance  than  our  splendid  educational  enter- 
prise in  the  Philippines. 

The  Bureau  of  Immigration  and  Naturalization  might  well  be 
divided,  and  the  functions  of  the  latter  modified  and  extended. 
The  work  and  responsibility  of.  granting  naturalization  to  aliens 
should  be  taken  away  from  courts  which  are  not  qualified  for  such  a 
function  and  vested  in  a  body  specially  constituted  for  that  purpose. 
Every  candidate  for  citizenship  should  present  certificates  of  grad- 
uation in  American  history,  politics,  civics,  English,  and  principles 
of  American  civilization.  The  Bureau  of  Naturalization  should 
also  secure  from  the  Bureau  of  Registration  certificates  of  the 
good  behavior  and  the  moral  fitness  of  candidates,  granting  nat- 
uralization only  to  those  morally  as  well  as  educationally  qualified. 

A  day  might  be  set  aside  each  year,  perhaps  the  Fourth  of 
July,  or  Washington's  Birthday,  or  both,  on  which  to  administer 
the  oath  of  allegiance  and  to  extend  official  welcome  to  all  new 
citizens.  Patriotic  processions,  banquets,  and  speeches,  with  appro- 
priate pins,  banners,  and  badges,  could  make  the  event  as  im- 
portant and  significant  as  commencement  exercises  are  in  our 
colleges  and  universities. 

A  fresh  definition  of  eligibility  for  American  citizenship  is 
needed.  American  citizenship  should  be  based  on  individual  quali- 
fication. Race  of  itself  should  be  neither  a  qualification  nor  a  disqual- 
ification for  citizenship.  Let  us  raise  the  standards  for  citizenship 
as  high  as  may  be  needed  ;  but,  whatever  the  standards  are,  let  us 
apply  them  impartially.  Whoever  qualifies  should  be  admitted. 


416  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Let  such  special  legislation  as  may  be  needed  to  enable  Asiatic 
naturalization  be  taken  promptly  by  Congress. 

The  granting  of  rights  of  naturalization  to  all  on  a  personal, 

j  not  a  racial,  basis  would  go  far  toward  solving  the  entire  problem 

i  now  pending  with  Japan.     Existing  anti-Japanese  legislation  of 

California  and  other  states  would  at  once  be  void.   The  Japanese 

nation   and    government   would   be   intensely   gratified,  for  they 

would  recognize  that  America  as  a  whole  insists  on  justice  and 

equality  of  treatment  for  Japanese  in  our  land. 

Japanese  individuals  who  have  taken  the  required  courses  of 
education  for  citizenship  and  are  ready  on  the  one  hand  to  re- 
nounce openly  their  allegiance  to  Japan,  and  on  the  other  to  take 
the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  United  States,  would  without  doubt 
make  as  loyal  Americans  as  those  who  come  from  any  other  land. 

Direct  federal  responsibility  in  all  legal  and  legislative  matters 
involving  aliens  is  also  essential.  Aliens  are  guests  of  the  nation, 
not  of  the  States  ;  and  the  nation  is  responsible  to  foreign  gov- 
ernments for  their  just  treatment.  Foreign  governments  have  no 
relation  with  the  States,  but  only  with  the  federal  government. 
It  is,  therefore,  the  duty  of  the  federal  government  to  provide 
that  the  treaty  rights  of  aliens  are  accorded  them.  It  logically 
follows  that  legal  proceedings  involving  aliens  should  be  handled 
exclusively  in  federal,  not  in  State,  courts.  The  nation  must 
provide  that  treaty  and  other  rights  shall  be  accorded  aliens, 
regardless  of  the  ignorance  or  prejudice  of  unfriendly  localities. 

A  national  commission  on  biological  and  social  assimilation  is 
needed.  This  should  be  a  commission  of  expert  biologists, 
physiologists,  and  sociologists  of  international  repute,  and  should 
be  adequately  financed.  The  results  of  such  study  should  be  em- 
bodied in  national  laws  concerning  (i)  the  intermarriage  of  indi- 
viduals of  different  races  ;  (2)  the  elimination  by  sterilization  of 
those  whose  heredity  renders  procreation  a  menace  to  the  nation  ; 
and  (3)  wise  methods  for  Americanizing  already  compacted 
unassimilated  groups  of  aliens. 

There  is  no  more  intricate,  and  at  the  same  time  important, 
problem  confronting  our  country  to-day  than  that  of  the  inter- 
marriage of  the  races. 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  417 

We  need  rational  national  laws  on  this  subject.  It  is  absurd 
for  California  to  have  laws  forbidding  the  marriage  of  whites  and 
Mongolians  while  Colorado  does  not.  It  is  preposterous  to  make 
a  crime  in  California  what  is  perfectly  legal  in  Colorado  or  Ne- 
vada. And  the  California  law  is  of  no  practical  effect ;  for  she 
has  to  recognize  the  legitimacy  of  mixed  marriages  if  performed 
outside  of  her  own  limits.  If  the  California  law  rests  on  good 
scientific  grounds,  then  it  should  be  national  ;  if  it  does  not,  then 
California  should  have  no  such  law. 

Systematic  education  of  public-school  children  in  Oriental  his- 
tory is  another  item  in  the  writer's  vision  of  the  new  American 
Oriental  policy.  Indeed,  for  the  general  elimination  of  race  prej- 
udice education  is  needed  in  regard  to  the  history  of  all  peoples 
from  whom  immigrants  come  to  our  shores.  Anthropological 
readers  should  be  prepared,  devoting  one  or  more  chapters  to 
each  race  and  people  of  whom  representatives  live  in  our  land, 
written  from  an  appreciative  standpoint  and  setting  forth  the 
notable  deeds  of  each.  They  should  be  well  illustrated  with  fine 
engravings  of  the  best  representatives,  dressed  in  modern  Euro- 
pean clothing  in  order  to  avoid  those  caricatures  which  are  so 
common  in  pictures  of  strange  peoples.  Such  readers  would  help 
the  young  to  get  over  their  spontaneous  feelings  of  race  antipathy. 

Such  are  the  outlines  of  a  comprehensive  policy  for  the  treat- 
ment of  all  races  and  nations  and  the  care  of  all  resident  aliens 
in  our  lands.  To  some  it  may  perhaps  seem  a  misnomer  to  call 
this  plan  a  new  Oriental  policy,  for  it  advocates  nothing  distinctive 
regarding  Orientals.  True  !  And  this  exactly  is  the  reason  for 
calling  it  our  new  Oriental  policy.  It  is  a  policy  which  does  not 
discriminate  against  Asiatics,  and  therefore  it  is  new.  It  is  new 
both  in  its  spirit  and  in  its  concrete  elements. 

The  early  adoption  of  the  main  features  of  this  policy  would 
assure  California  on  the  one  hand  that  no  swamping  Asiatic  im- 
migration is  to  be  allowed,  thus  securing  what  she  demands.  It 
would  also  satisfy  and  even  please  Japan,  granting  the  substance 
of  what  she  urges. 

In  regard  to  the  Chinese,  also,  the  situation  would  be  much 
improved.  The  fairness,  yes,  the  generosity  of  our  policy,  adopted 


41 8  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

by  us  with  no  pressure  from  her  side,  would  serve  to  strengthen 
and  deepen  the  spirit  of  friendship  for  America  and  render  still 
more  effective  American  influence  in  guiding  that  new  republic 
through  the  troublous  times  that  are  surely  ahead. 

If  America  can  permanently  hold  the  friendship  and  trust  of 
/Japan  and  China  through  just,  courteous,  and  kindly  treatment, 
she  will  thereby  destroy  the  anti-white  Asiatic  solidarity.  If 
America  proves  to  Asia  that  one  white  people  at  least  does  not 
despise  the  Asiatics  as  such  nor  seek  to  exploit  them,  but  rather 
on  a  basis  of  mutual  respect  and  justice  seeks  their  real  prosperity, 
Asia  will  discover  that  the  "  white  peril  "  is  in  fact  an  inesti- 
/  mable  benefit.  And  that  change  of  feeling  will  bring  to  naught 
|  the  "yellow  peril"  now  dreaded  by  the  whites. 

Even  from  the  lower  standpoint  of  commercial  and  economic 
interests  the  policy  of  justice  toward  and  friendship  with  the 
Orient  is  beyond  question  the  right  one.  Armed  conflict,  or  even 
merely  sullen  hostility,  mightily  hampers  trade  success.  Rapid 
internal  development  in  China  and  a  rising  standard  of  life 
among  her  millions  means  enormous  trade  with  America,  if 
we  are  friendly  and  just.  And  unselfish  friendship  and  justice 
on  our  side  will  hasten  the  uplift  of  China's  millions.  Our  own 
highest  prosperity  is  inseparable  from  that  of  all  Asia.  So  long 
as  friendship  is  maintained  and  peace  based  on  just  international 
relations,  the  military  yellow  peril  will  be  impossible.  In  propor- 
tion as  the  scale  of  living  among  Asia's  working  millions  rises 
to  the  level  of  our  own  is  the  danger  of  an  economic  yellow 
peril  diminished. 

Every  consideration,  therefore,  of  justice,  humanity  and  self- 
interest  demands  the  early  adoption  of  the  general  principles  of 
this  new  Oriental  policy.  It  conserves  all  the  interests  of  the 
East  and  the  West  and  is  in  harmony  with  the  new  era  of 
universal  evolution  of  mankind.1 

1  For  a  more  extended  treatment  of  the  Japanese  situation  in  California,  see 
Gulick,  The  American  Japanese  Problem,  1914,  and  Millis,  The  Japanese  Problem 
in  the  United  States,  1915. 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  419 

38.    THE  ETHICAL  ASPECTS  OF  REGULATION1 

In  any  discussion  of  the  immigration  question,  there  are  always 
many  persons  who,  admitting  the  legal  power,  question  the  moral 
right  of  a  country  to  exclude  immigrants,  at  least  such  as  are 
honest  and  well  disposed.  Among  the  opponents  of  restriction 
in  this  country  have  been  a  number  of  high-minded  and  public- 
spirited  men  who  have  based  their  opposition  to  such  legislation 
upon  this  ground.  It  is  desirable,  therefore,  to  consider  for  a 
moment  the  ethical  aspects  of  the  matter.  We  can  sympathize 
with  Professor  Mayo-Smith  when  he  says : 

The  control  of  immigration  must  be  free  from  the  base  cry  of  "America  for 
the  Americans"  and  from  any  narrow  spirit  of  trade  unionism,  or  from  a  selfish 
desire  to  monopolize  the  labor  market.  It  must  find  its  justification  in  the  needs 
of  the  community,  and  in  the  necessity  of  selecting  those  elements  which  will 
contribute  to  the  harmonious  development  of  our  civilization.2 

It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that  we  are  living  in  a  democ- 
racy which  our  ancestors  established  here,  and  that  a  democracy 
is  a  very  delicate  machine,  requiring  for  its  successful  operation 
certain  political  and  moral  ideals  and  the  intelligent  cooperation 
of  every  citizen.  Our  institutions  were  established  by  a  relatively 
homogeneous  community,  consisting  of  the  best  elements  of  pop- 
ulation selected  by  the  circumstances  under  which  they  came  to 
the  new  world.  To-day  much  of  our  immigration  is  an  artificial 
selection  by  the  transportation  companies  of  the  worst  elements 
of  European  and  Asiatic  peoples.  If  the  founders  of  the  nation 
had  been  of  the  recent  types,  can  we  suppose  for  a  moment  that 
this  country  would  enjoy  its  present  civilization  ?  Even  as  it  is, 
we  have  been  obliged  to  desert  the  political  theories  of  the  early 
days,  and  to  adopt  various  despotic  devices  in  order  to  control 
the  inferior  elements  which  have  come  into  our  body  politic. 

The  most  valuable  service  which  the  American  nation  can  render 
to  humanity  at  large  is  to  preserve  and  to  perfect  the  institutions 

1  By  Prescott  F.  Hall.  From  Immigration  and  its  Effects  upon  the  United  States, 
2d  edition  (revised),  pp.  320-323.    Henry  Holt  and  Company,  New  York,  1908. 
Mr.  Hall  is  the  head  of  the  Immigration  Restriction  League,  Boston. 

2  Emigration  and  Immigration,  p.  278. 


420  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  its  founders.  Assuming  that  we  are  aiming  at  making  the 
world  as  a  whole  a  better  place  to  live  in,  we  must  remember  that 
we  can  accomplish  this  through  the  medium  of  the  nation  as  well 
as  through  the  medium  of  the  individual ;  and,  bearing  in  mind 
that  the  birth  rate  in  the  older  countries  soon  restores  in  them 
the  precise  condition  which  obtained  before  immigration  took 
place,  we  find  that  in  many  cases  the  benefit  is  not  to  the  country 
whence  the  immigrants  come,  but  only,  if  at  all,  to  the  immigrants 
themselves.  By  making  this  "great  experiment  of  free  laws  and 
educated  labor,"  as  General  Walker  has  called  it,  a  triumphant 
success  we  shall  help  the  world  more  than  by  allowing  indiscrim- 
inate immigration. 

We  may  go  further,  and  say  it  is  our  duty  toward  the  world, 
not  only  to  preserve  in  this  country  the  conditions  necessary  to 
successful  democracy,  but  to  develop  here  the  finest  race  of  men 
and.  the  highest  civilization.  We  have  in  the  United  States  a 
unique  opportunity  to  try  the  effect  of  hybridizing  race-stocks 
upon  an  enormous  scale.  In  every  other  department,  when  we 
try  such  experiments,  we  take  care  to  select  the  best  specimens 
of  each  stock.  The  race  horse,  the  seedless  orange,  and  scores  of 
valuable  animals  and  plants  have  been  developed  as  the  result 
of  artificial  selection,  which  would  never  have  been  brought  into 
existence  without  it.  The  human  reason  is,  indeed,  one  of  the 
forces  through  which  the  Power  of  the  Universe  works,  and  it  is 
hard  to  understand  why  the  laissez-faire  advocates  claim  it  should 
be  excluded  from  the  one  field  of  immigration  problems. 

Natural  selection  cannot  be  trusted  to  itself  to  bring  about  the 
best  results.  "  Survival  of  the  fittest "  means  that  those  survive 
who  are  fittest  for  survival,  but  not  necessarily  fittest  for  any 
other  purpose.  This  is  seen  when  we  compare  the  statesman  or 
a  college  president  who  has  two  children  and  educates  them  so 
that  they  take  useful  and  important  places  in  society,  with  some 
poor  drunkard  in  the  slums  who  has  a  dozen  children  and  gives 
them  no  advantages  at  all.  With  modern  sanitation  these  chil- 
dren do  not  die,  as  they  might  have  once,  but  they  start  with  a 
frightful  handicap  and  are  likely  to  be,  to  some  extent,  weak, 
criminal,  and  comparatively  valueless  to  the  community.  Now,  the 


THE  REGULATION  OF  IMMIGRATION  421 

second  man  has  "  survived  "  in  his  children  six  times  as  much 
as  the  first  man,  and  yet  neither  he  nor  his  children  may  be  as 
fit  for  any  purpose  as  the  first  man  and  his  children.  In  other 
words,  the  mere  test  of  productive  power  in  time  is  not  a  test 
of  qualitative  or  teleological  value.  Many  who  perished  in  the 
French  Revolution  and  in  the  other  great  massacres  of  history 
were  undoubtedly  superior  in  every  way  to  those  who  killed  them. 
The  tempest,  the  plague  and  the  avalanche  destroy  equally  the 
just  and  the  unjust. 

Nature  tries  her  experiments  on  a  vast  scale  and  can  afford  to 
do  so.  She  has  infinite  time  to  work  in,  and  so  is  "careless  of 
the  single  life."  But  man  can  hasten  the  production  of  finer 
types.  A  recent  writer  in  New  Zealand  attributes  the  success  of 
that  country,  which  has  the  largest  per  capita  wealth  of  any  country 
in  the  world,  to  the  artificial  selection  of  its  early  settlers,  follow- 
ing the  policy  of  Gibbon  Wakefield. 

Let  us,  then,  continue  the  benefits  of  that  selection  which  took 
place  in  the  early  days  of  the  nation  by  sifting  the  immigration 
of  to-day,  so  that  no  discordant  elements  shall  enter  to  imperil 
the  ideals  and  institutions  of  our  nation,  and  to  the  end  that  we 
may  produce  a  still  finer  race  to  help  the  world  in  its  progress. 
Such  selection  of  immigration  surely  has  the  highest  ethical 
sanction.  Dr.  Phillips  Brooks,  one  of  the  largest-hearted  men  of 
our  times,  has  stated  this  in  the  following  words  : 

No  nation,  as  no  man,  has  a  right  to  take  possession  of  a  choice  bit  of  God's 
earth,  to  exclude  the  foreigner  from  its  territory,  that  it  may  live  more  comfort- 
ably and  be  a  little  more  at  peace.  But  if  to  this  particular  nation  there  has 
been  given  the  development  of  a  certain  part  of  God's  earth  for  universal  pur- 
poses ;  if  the  world,  in  the  great  march  of  the  centuries,  is  going  to  be  richer 
for  the  development  of  a  certain  national  character,  built  up  by  a  larger  type 
of  manhood  here,  then  for  the  world's  sake,  for  the  sake  of  every  nation  that 
would  pour  in  upon  us  that  which  would  disturb  that  development,  we  have  a 
right  to  stand  guard  over  it.  We  are  to  develop  here  in  America  a  type  of  na- 
tional character,  we  believe,  for  which  the  world  is  to  be  richer  always.  It  may 
be  the  last  great  experiment  for  God's  wandering  humanity  upon  earth.  We 
have  a  right  to  stand  guard  over  the  conditions  of  that  experiment,  letting 
nothing  interfere  with  it,  drawing  into  it  the  richness  that  is  to  come  by  the 
entrance  of  many  men  from  many  nations  and  they  in  sympathy  with  our  Con- 
stitution and  our  laws. 


422  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

REFERENCES l 

GOVERNMENT  PUBLICATIONS 

*  Annual  Reports  of  the  United  States  Commissioner  of  Immigration. 
Report  of  the  United  States  Immigration  Commission  (42  vols.). 

*See  especially  Vols.  I  and  II,  which  are  an  abstract  of  the  whole  report 
Report  of  New  York  State  Commission  on  Immigration,  1909. 

GENERAL 

*  COMMONS,  JOHN  R.,  Races  and  Immigrants  in  America,  1907. 

*  FAIRCHILD,  H.  P.,  Immigration,  a  World  Movement  and  its  American 

Significance,  1913. 

*  HALL,  P.  F.,  Immigration  and  its  Effects  upon  the  United  States,  1906. 
JENK.S,  J.W.,  andLAUCK,  W.  J.,The  Immigration  Problem,  3d  edition,  1913. 
ROBERTS,  PETER,  The  New  Immigration,  1912. 

*  Ross,  E.  A.,  The  Old  World  in  the  New,  1914. 
WARNE,  F.  J.,  The  Immigrant  Invasion,  1913. 

SPECIFIC  RACES 

BABCOCK,  K.  C.,  The  Scandinavian  Element  in  the  United  States.  Uni- 
versity of  Illinois  Studies  in  the  Social  Sciences,  Vol.  Ill,  No.  3 
(September,  1914). 

BALCH,  E.  G.,  Our  Slavic  Fellow  Citizens,  1910. 

COOLIDGE,  M.  R.,  Chinese  Immigration,  1909. 

FAIRCHILD,  H.  P.,  Greek  Immigration,  1911. 

FAUST,  A.  B.,  The  German  Element  in  the  United  States  (2  vols.),  1909. 

GULICK,  S.  L.,  The  American  Japanese  Problem,  1914. 

JOSEPH,  SAMUEL,  Jewish  Immigration  to  the  United  States  from  iSSi  to 
1910.  Columbia  University  Studies  in  History,  Economics,  and  Public 
Law,  Vol.  LIX,  No.  4,  1914. 

LORD,  TRENOR,  and  BARROWS,  The  Italian  in  America,  1903. 

DESCRIPTIVE  AND  NARRATIVE 

*ANTINT,  MARY,  The  Promised  Land,  1912. 

*  BALCH,  E.  G.,  Our  Slavic  Fellow  Citizens,  1910. 

BRANDENBURG,  B.,  Imported  Americans,  the  Experience  of  a  Disguised 

American  and  his  Wife  on  a  Steerage  Trip  to  and  from  Italy,  1904. 
BYINGTON,  M.  F.,  Homestead:  the  Households  of  a  Mill  Town,  1910. 
Rns,  JACOB  A.,  The  Making  of  an  American,  1901. 
STEINER,  E.  A.,  The   Immigrant  Tide,  1909. 
STEINER,  E.  A.,  On  the  Trail  of  the  Immigrant,  1906. 
WOODS,  R.  A.  (Editor),  Americans  in  Process,  1902. 
WOODS,  R.  A.  (Editor),  The  City  Wilderness,  1898. 

1  Starred  references  are  those  worthy  of  first  attention  in  additional  reading. 


BOOK  III 
THE  WOMAN  PROBLEM 

CHAPTER  X 

THE  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  IDEAL  OF  WOMAN  AND 
THE  EARLY  MOVEMENT  FOR  WOMEN'S  RIGHTS 

An  early  nineteenth-century  estimate  of  the  character  and  duties  of  women,  424. 

—  Attitude  of  the  orthodox  clergy  toward  the  early  women's-rights  movement,  427. 

—  Rousseau's  ideas  on  the  proper  education  for  girls,  428.  —  Mary  Wollstone- 
craft  on  the  influence  of  education  and  social  surroundings,  433.  —  Declaration 

of  Sentiments  adopted  by  the  first  Woman's  Rights  Convention,  440. 

[We  may  perhaps  get  a  fair  understanding  of  some  social  situ- 
ations without  going  back  to  their  historical  setting,  but  hardly  of 
the  feminist  movement.  While  some  knowledge  of  the  anthropo- 
logical background  and  still  more  of  the  position  of  women  in 
Greece  and  Rome  and  under  Canon  Law  and  Medieval  Chris- 
tian sentiment  is  desirable,  it  is  essential  that  we  know  something 
of  the  position  of  woman  and  of  the  accepted  ideals  of  her 
"  character  and  duties  "  in  the  eighteenth  and  early  nineteenth 
centuries,  especially  in  England  and  the  United  States.  Only  if 
we  see  clearly  the  significance  of  this  historical  aspect  of  woman's 
place  in  society,  are  we  in  position  to  understand  the  animus  and 
the  meaning  of  the  early  women's-rights  movement  or  of  the 
sporadic  early  literature  of  the  question,  from  Mary  Wollstonecraft 
to  John  Stuart  Mill.  It  is  a  question  how  much  of  the  eight- 
eenth-century ideal  of  woman  still  remains.  Certainly  it  lasted 
well  down  past  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century.  There 
are  doubtless  still  many  survivals  of  it  in  our  unconscious  atti- 
tudes, and  even  now,  here  and  there,  a  writer  is  found  who 
harks  back  to  it  as  a  forsaken  ideal  which  should  be  returned 

423 


424  READINGS   IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

to.1  In  any  case  it  is  most  instructive  to  compare  the  social,  eco- 
nomic, and  moral  status  of  woman  to-day  with  what  it  was  before 
the  Industrial  Revolution  and  modern  democratic  ideals  had  begun 
to  work  their  profound  change  on  woman's  relation  to  society.] 


39.    AN  ESTIMATE  OF  THE  CHARACTER  AND  CAPACITY 
OF  WOMEN2 

The  Power  who  called  the  human  race  into  being  has,  with 
infinite  wisdom,  regarded,  in  the  structure  of  the  corporeal  frame, 
the  tasks  which  the  different  sexes  were  respectively  destined  to 
fill.  To  man,  on  whom  the  culture  of  the  soil,  the  erection  of 
dwellings,  and,  in  general,  those  operations  of  industry,  and  those 
measures  of  defense,  which  include  difficult  and  dangerous  exer- 
tion, were  ultimately  to  devolve,  he  has  imparted  the  strength  of 
limb,  and  the  robustness  of  constitution,  requisite  for  the  perse- 
vering endurance  of  toil.  The  female  form,  not  commonly 
doomed,  in  countries  where  the  progress  of  civilization  is  far 
advanced,  to  labors  more  severe  than  the  offices  of  domestic  life, 
he  has  cast  in  a  smaller  mold,  and  bound  together  by  a  looser 
texture.  But  to  protect  weakness  from  the  oppression  of  domi- 
neering superiority,  those  whom  he  has  not  qualified  to  contend 
he  has  enabled  to  fascinate  ;  and  has  amply  compensated  the  de- 
fect of  muscular  vigor  by  symmetry  and  expression,  by  elegance 
and  grace.  To  me  it  appears  that  he  has  adopted,  and  that  he 
has  adopted  with  the  most  conspicuous  wisdom,  a  corresponding 
plan  of  discrimination  between  the  mental  powers  and  disposi- 
tions of  the  two  sexes.  The  science  of  legislation,  of  jurispru- 
dence, of  political  economy,  the  conduct  of  government  in  all  its 
executive  functions,  the  abstruse  researches  of  erudition,  the  in- 
exhaustible depths  of  philosophy,  the  acquirements  subordinate 
to  navigation,  the  knowledge  indispensable  in  the  wide  field  of 

1  Sec,  for  instance,  Ferrcro,  "  The  Problem  of  Women  from  a  Bio-Sociological 
Point  of  View,"  in  the  .)/<>;/ /'.i/,  Vol.  IV,  No.  2,  pp.  262  ff.    Also  I.yman  Abbott,  The 
Home  Builder,  1908. 

2  By  Thomas  Gisborne.    From  An  Inquiry  into  the  Duties  of  the  Female  Sex, 
1 3th  edition,  pp.  12-16,  21-23.    London,  1823. 


THE  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  IDEAL  OF  WOMAN     425 

commercial  enterprise,  the  arts  of  defense  and  of  attack  by  land 
and  by  sea,  which  the  violence  or  fraud  of  unprincipled  assailants 
render  needful ;  these  and  other  studies,  pursuits,  and  occupations, 
assigned  chiefly  or  entirely  to  men,  demand  the  efforts  of  a  mind 
indued  with  the  powers  of  close  and  comprehensive  reasoning, 
and  of  intense  and  continued  application,  in  a  degree  in  which 
they  are  not  requisite  for  the  discharge  of  the  customary  offices  of 
female  duty.  It  would  therefore  seem  natural  to  expect,  and  ex- 
perience, I  think,  confirms  the  justice  of  the  expectation,  that  the 
Giver  of  all  good,  after  bestowing  those  powers  on  men  with  a 
liberality  proportioned  to  the  existing  necessity,  would  impart 
them  to  the  female  mind  with  a  more  sparing  hand.  It  was 
equally  natural  to  expect  that  in  the  dispensation  of  other  quali- 
ties and  talents,  useful  and  important  to  both  sexes,  but  particu- 
larly suited  to  the  sphere  in  which  women  were  intended  to  move, 
he  would  confer  the  larger  portion  of  his  bounty  on  those  who 
needed  it  the  most.  It  is  accordingly  manifest  that  in  sprightli- 
ness  and  vivacity,  in  quickness  of  perception,  in  fertility  of  inven- 
tion, in  powers  adapted  to  unbend  the  brow  of  the  learned, 
to  refresh  the  overlabored  faculties  of  the  wise,  and  to  diffuse 
throughout  the  family  circle  the  enlivening  and  endearing  smile 
of  cheerfulness,  the  superiority  of  the  female  mind  is  unrivaled. 
Does  man,  vain  of  his  preeminence  in  the  track  of  profound 
investigation,  boast  that  the  result  of  the  inquiry  is  in  his  favor  ? 
Let  him  check  the  premature  triumph,  and  listen  to  the  statement 
of  another  article  in  the  account,  which,  in  the  judgment  of 
prejudice  itself,  will  be  found  to  restore  the  balance.  As  yet  the 
native  worth  of  the  female  character  has  been  imperfectly  devel- 
oped. To  estimate  it  fairly,  the  view  must  be  extended  from  the 
compass  and  shades  of  intellect,  to  the  dispositions  and  feelings 
of  the  heart.  Were  we  called  upon  to  produce  examples  of  the 
most  amiable  tendencies  and  affections  implanted  in  human 
nature,  of  modesty,  of  delicacy,  of  sympathizing  sensibility,  of 
prompt  and  active  benevolence,  of  warmth  and  tenderness  of 
attachment ;  whither  should  we  at  once  turn  our  eyes  ?  To  the 
sister,  to  the  daughter,  to  the  wife.  These  endowments  form  the 
glory  of  the  female  sex.  They  shine  amidst  the  darkness  of 


426  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

uncultivated  barbarism ;  they  give  to  civilized  society  its  brightest 
and  most  attractive  luster. 

Of  the  errors  and  vices  which  infest  human  nature,  some  are 
equally  prevalent  in  the  two  sexes  ;  while  others,  in  consequence 
of  the  peculiarities  by  which  the  character  of  the  one  sex  is  dis- 
criminated from  that  of  the  other,  peculiarities  which  gain  addi- 
tional strength  from  the  diversity  in  the  offices  of  life  respec- 
tively assigned  to  each,  do  not  exercise  an  equal  power  over  both. 
Thus,  among  women  in  whom  feminine  delicacy  and  feeling 
have  not  been  almost  obliterated  (I  am  not,  at  present,  taking 
religious  principle  into  the  account),  intemperance  in  wine,  and 
the  use  of  language  grossly  profane,  are  nearly  unknown  ;  and 
she  who  would  be  guilty  of  either  sin,  would  be  generally  re- 
garded as  having  debased  herself  to  the  level  of  a  brute.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  are  failings  and  temptations  to  which  the 
female  mind  is  particularly  exposed  by  its  native  structure  and 
dispositions.  On  these  treacherous  underminers,  these  inbred 
assailants  of  female  peace  and  excellence,  the  superintending 
eye  of  education  is  steadfastly  to  be  fixed.  The  remains  of  their 
unsubdued  hostility  will  be  among  the  circumstances  which  will 
exercise  even  to  the  close  of  life  the  most  vigilant  labors  of  con- 
science. It  is  necessary,  therefore,  to  be  explicit  on  the  subject. 

The  gay  vivacity,  and  the  quickness  of  imagination,  so  con- 
spicuous among  the  qualities  in  which  the  superiority  of  women 
is  acknowledged,  have  a  tendency  to  lead  to  unsteadiness  of 
mind  ;  to  fondness  of  novelty,  to  habits  of  frivolousness  and 
trifling  employment,  to  dislike  of  sober  application,  to  repugnance 
to  graver  studies,  and  a  too  low  estimation  of  their  worth,  to  an 
unreasonable  regard  for  wit,  and  shining  accomplishments,  to  a 
thirst  for  admiration  and  applause,  to  vanity  and  affectation. 

Sensibility  itself,  singularly  engaging  and  amiable  as  it  is, 
comes  not  without  its  disadvantages.  It  is  liable  to  sudden 
excesses  ;  it  nurtures  unmerited  attachments  ;  it  is  occasion- 
ally the  source  of  suspicion,  fretfulness,  and  groundless  discon- 
tent ;  it  sometimes  degenerates  into  weakness  and  pusillanimity, 
and  prides  itself  on  the  feebleness  of  character  which  it  has 
occasioned. 


THE  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  IDEAL  OF  WOMAN     427 

40.  ATTITUDE  OF  THE  ORTHODOX  CLERGY  TOWARD 
THE  EARLY  WOMEN'S  RIGHTS  MOVEMENT1 

We  invite  your  attention  to  the  dangers  which  at  present  seem 
to  threaten  the  female  character  with  widespread  and  permanent 
injury. 

The  appropriate  duties  and  influence  of  women  are  clearly  stated 
in  the  New  Testament.  Those  duties  and  that  influence  are  un- 
obtrusive and  private,  but  the  source  of  mighty  power.  When 
the  mild,  dependent,  softening  influence  of  women  upon  the  stern- 
ness of  man's  opinions  is  fully  exercised,  society  feels  the  effect 
of  it  in  a  thousand  forms.  The  power  of  woman  is  her  depend- 
ence, flowing  from  the  consciousness  of  that  weakness  which  God 
has  given  her  for  her  protection,  and  which  keeps  her  in  those 
departments  of  life  that  form  the  character  of  individuals,  and  of 
the  nation.  There  are  social  influences  which  females  use  in 
promoting  piety  and  the  great  objects  of  Christian  benevolence 
which  we  cannot  too  highly  commend. 

We  appreciate  the  unostentatious  prayers  and  efforts  of  woman 
in  advancing  the  cause  of  religion  at  home  and  abroad  ;  in  Sab- 
bath-schools ;  in  leading  religious  inquirers  to  the  pastors  for  in- 
struction ;  and  in  all  such  associated  effort  as  becomes  the  modesty 
of  their  sex ;  and  earnestly  hope  that  she  may  abound  more  and 
more  in  these  labors  of  piety  and  love.  But  when  she  assumes 
the  place  and  tone  of  man  as  a  public  reformer,  our  care  and 
protection  to  her  seem  unnecessary  ;  we  put  ourselves  in  self- 
defense  against  her ;  she  yields  the  power  which  God  has  given 
her  for  her  protection,  and  her  character  becomes  unnatural.  If 
the  vine,  whose  strength  and  beauty  is  to  lean  upon  the  trellis 
work,  and  half  conceal  its  clusters,  thinks  to  assume  the  inde- 
pendence and  overshadowing  nature  of  the  elm,  it  will  not  only 
cease  to  bear  fruit,  but  fall  in  shame  and  dishonor  into  the  dust. 
We  cannot,  therefore,  but  regret  the  mistaken  conduct  of  those 
who  encourage  females  to  bear  an  obtrusive  and  ostentatious  part 

1  Extract  from  a  Pastoral  Letter  of  the  General  Association  of  Massachusetts 
to  the  churches  under  their  care,  1837.  From  The  History  of  Woman  Suffrage, 
Vol.  I,  pp.  81-82. 


428  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

in  measures  of  reform,  and  countenance  any  of  that  sex  who  so 
far  forget  themselves  as  to  itinerate  in  the  character  of  public  lec- 
turers and  teachers.  We  especially  deplore  the  intimate  acquaint- 
ance and  conversation  of  females  with  regard  to  things  which 
ought  not  to  be  named ;  by  which  that  modesty  and  delicacy 
which  is  the  charm  of  domestic  life,  and  which  constitutes  the 
true  influence  of  woman  in  society,  is  consumed,  and  the  way 
opened,  as  we  apprehend,  for  degeneracy  and  ruin.  We  say 
these  things  not  to  discourage  proper  influences  against  sin,  but 
to  secure  such  reformation  as  we  believe  is  Scriptural,  and  will 
be  permanent. 

41.    ON   THE  CHARACTER  AND  PROPER  EDUCATION 
OF  WOMEN1 

Sophie  ought  to  be  a  woman,  as  Emile  is  a  man  —  that  is,  she 
should  have  whatever  is  befitting  the  constitution  of  her  species 
and  of  her  sex,  in  order  to  fill  her  place  in  the  physical  and 
moral  world.  Let  us  then  begin  by  examining  the  conformities 
and  differences  between  her  sex  and  ours. 

All  that  we  know  with  a  certainty  is  that  the  only  thing  in 
common  between  man  and  woman  is  the  species,  and  that  they 
differ  only  in  respect  of  sex.  Under  this  double  point  of  view 
we  find  between  them  so  many  semblances  and  so  many  con- 
trasts, that  it  is  perhaps  one  of  the  wonders  of  Nature  that  she 
could  make  two  beings  so  similar  and  yet  constitute  them  so 
differently. 

These  correspondences  and  these  differences  must  needs  have 
their  moral  effect.  This  consequence  is  obvious,  is  in  conformity 

1  By  J.  J.  Rousseau.  Adapted  from  Emile,  or  Treatise  on  Education  (abridged 
and  translated  by  \V.  II.  Payne),  pp.  259-281.  D.  Appleton  and  Company,  New 
York,  1892.  Emile,  an  educational  classic,  was  first  published  in  1762.  Few  books 
have  had  a  more  powerful  or  more  lasting  influence  upon  educational  ideals.  Rous- 
seau, after  laying  down  the  principles  of  the  education  of  Emile  up  to  the  time  he 
is  of  marriageable  age,  then  devotes  some  incidental  attention  to  the  proper  ed- 
ucation of  fimile's  future  wife,  Sophie.  The  selections  here  given  are  significant 
not  only  as  revealing  the  eighteenth-  and  early  nineteenth-century  attitude  toward 
women,  but  also  because  they  constituted  a  direct  stimulus  to  the  writing  of  Mary 
Wollstonecraft's  Vindication  of  the  Rights  of  Women  (see  p.  433.) 


THE  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  IDEAL  OF  WOMAN     429 

with  experience,  and  shows  the  vanity  of  the  disputes  as  to  the 
superiority  or  the  equality  of  the  sexes ;  as  if  each  of  them, 
answering  the  ends  of  Nature  according  to  its  particular  destina- 
tion, were  not  more  perfect  on  that  account  than  if  it  bore  a  greater 
resemblance  to  the  other !  With  respect  to  what  they  have  in 
common  they  are  equal ;  and  in  so  far  as  they  are  different  they 
are  not  capable  of  being  compared.  A  perfect  man  and  a  perfect 
woman  ought  no  more  to  resemble  each  other  in  mind  than  in 
features  ;  and  perfection  is  not  susceptible  of  greater  or  less. 

In  the  union  of  the  sexes  each  contributes  equally  toward  the 
common  end,  but  not  in  the  same  way.  Hence  arises  the  first 
assignable  difference  among  their  moral  relations.  One  must  be 
active  and  strong,  the  other  passive  and  weak.  One  must  needs 
have  power  and  will,  while  it  suffices  that  the  other  have  little 
power  of  resistance. 

This  principle  once  established,  it  follows  that  woman  is  espe- 
cially constituted  to  please  man.  If  man  ought  to  please  her  in 
return,  the  necessity  for  it  is  less  direct.  His  merit  lies  in  his 
power;  he  pleases  simply  because  he  is  strong.  I  grant  that' 
this  is  not  the  law  of  love,  but  it  is  the  law  of  Nature,  which  is 
anterior  even  to  love. 

All  the  faculties  common  to  the  two  sexes  are  not  equally  di- 
vided, but,  taken  as  a  whole,  they  offset  one  another.  Woman  is 
worth  more  as  a  woman,  but  less  as  a  man  ;  wherever  she  improves 
her  rights  she  has  the  advantages  and  wherever  she  attempts  to 
usurp  ours  she  remains  inferior  to  us.  Only  exceptional  cases 
can  be  urged  against  this  general  truth  —  the  usual  mode  of  argu- 
ment adopted  by  the  gallant  partisans  of  the  fair  sex. 

To  cultivate  in  women  the  qualities  of  the  men  and  to  neglect 
those  which  are  their  own  is,  then,  obviously  to  work  to  their 
detriment.  The  shrewd  among  them  see  this  too  clearly  to  be 
the  dupes  of  it. 

They  ought  to  learn  multitudes  of  things,  but  only  those  which 
it  becomes  them  to  know.  Whether  I  consider  the  particular 
destination  of  woman,  or  observe  her  inclinations,  or  take  account 
of  her  duties,  everything  concurs  equally  to  indicate  to  me  the 
form  of  education  which  befits  her. 


430  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

On  the  good  constitution  of  mothers  depends,  in  the  first  place, 
that  of  children ;  on  the  care  of  women  depends  the  early  educa- 
tion of  men ;  and  on  women,  again,  depend  their  manners,  their 
passions,  their  tastes,  their  pleasures,  and  even  their  happiness. 
Thus  the  whole  education  of  women  ought  to  be  relative  to  men. 
To  please  them,  to  be  useful  to  them,  to  make  themselves  loved 
and  honored  by  them,  to  educate  them  when  young,  to  care  for 
them  when  grown,  to  counsel  them,  to  console  them,  and  to 
make  life  sweet  and  agreeable  to  them  —  should  be  taught 
them  from  their  infancy.  So  long  as  we  do  not  ascend  to  this 
principle  we  shall  miss  the  goal,  and  all  the  precepts  which  we 
give  them  will  accomplish  nothing  either  for  their  happiness  or 
for  our  own. 

Little  girls,  almost  from  birth,  have  a  love  for  dress.  Not  con- 
tent with  being  pretty,  they  wish  to  be  thought  so.  We  see  in 
their  little  airs  that  this  care  already  occupies  their  minds  ;  and 
they  no  sooner  understand  what  is  said  to  them  than  we  control 
them  by  telling  them  what  people  will  think  of  them.  The  same 
motive,  very  indiscreetly  presented  to  little  boys,  is  very  far  from 
having  the  same  power  over  them.  Provided  they  are  independ- 
ent and  happy,  they  care  very  little  of  what  will  be  thought  of 
them.  Boys  seek  movement  and  noise  —  drums,  tops,  carts ;  but 
girls  prefer  what  appeals  to  the  sight  and  serves  as  ornament  — 
mirrors,  trinkets,  rags,  and  especially  dolls.  The  doll  is  the 
especial  amusement  of  this  sex ;  and  in  this  case  the  girl's  taste 
is  very  evidently  determined  by  her  destination.  The  mechanics 
of  the  art  of  pleasing  consists  in  dress,  and  this  is  all  of  this  art 
that  children  can  cultivate.  Here,  then,  [in  doll-dressing]  is  a 
very  decided  primitive  taste,  and  you  have  only  to  follow  it  and 
regulate  it.  Almost  all  little  girls  learn  to  read  and  write  with 
repugnance  :  but  as  to  holding  the  needle,  they  always  learn  this 
willingly.  They  imagine  themselves  already  grown,  and  take 
pleasure  in  thinking  that  these  little  talents  will  one  day  be  of 
service  in  adorning  them. 

The  first  and  most  important  quality  of  a  woman  is  gentleness. 
Made  to  obey  a  being  as  imperfect  as  man,  often  so  full  of  vices, 
and  always  so  full  of  faults,  she  ought  early  to  learn  to  suffer  even 


THE  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  IDEAL  OF  WOMAN     431 

injustice,  and  to  endure  the  wrongs  of  a  husband  without  com- 
plaint ;  and  it  is  not  for  him,  but  for  herself,  that  she  ought  to 
be  gentle.  The  harshness  and  obstinacy  of  women  serve  only  to 
increase  the  wrongs  and  bad  conduct  of  husbands  ;  they  feel  that 
it  is  not  with  these  arms  that  their  wives  should  conquer  them. 

For  the  reason  that  the  conduct  of  woman  is  subject  to  public 
opinion,  her  belief  is  subject  to  authority.  Every  daughter  should 
have  the  religion  of  her  mother,  and  every  wife  that  of  her 
husband.  Even  were  this  religion  false,  the  docility  which  makes 
the  mother  and  the  daughter  submit  to  the  order  of  nature 
expunges  in  the  sight  of  God  the  sin  of  error.  As  they  are  not 
in  a  condition  to  judge  for  themselves,  women  should  receive  the 
decision  of  fathers  and  husbands  as  they  would  the  decision  of 
the  Church.  Not  being  able  to  draw  from  themselves  alone  the 
rule  of  their  faith,  women  cannot  confine  it  within  the  boundaries 
of  evidence  and  reason,  but,  allowing  themselves  to  be  carried 
away  by  a  thousand  extraneous  impulses,  they  are  always  on  this 
side  or  that  of  the  truth.  Always  extremists,  they  are  all  free- 
thinkers or  devotees ;  none  of  them  are  able  to  combine  discre- 
tion with  piety.  Since  authority  ought  to  regulate  the  religion  of 
women,  it  is  not  so  important  to  explain  to  them  the  reasons 
which  we  have  for  believing  as  to  expound  to  them  with  clear- 
ness what  we  believe. 

The  reason  which  leads  man  to  a  knowledge  of  his  duties  is 
not  very  complex,  and  the  reason  which  leads  woman  to  a 
knowledge  of  hers  is  still  simpler.  The  obedience  and  fidelity 
which  she  owes  to  her  husband,  the  tenderness  and  care  which 
she  owes  to  her  children,  are  such  natural  and  obvious  conse- 
quences of  her  condition,  that  she  cannot,  without  bad  faith, 
refuse  to  consent  to  the  inner  sense  which  guides  her,  nor  fail  to 
recognize  her  duty  in  the  inclination  which  has  not  yet  been 
perverted. 

If  a  woman  were  wholly  restricted  to  the  tasks  of  her  sex,  and 
were  left  in  profound  ignorance  of  everything  else,  I  would  not 
indulge  in  indiscriminate  censure ;  but  this  would  require  a  very 
simple  and  wholesome  state  of  public  morals,  or  a  very  retired 
manner  of  living.  In  large  cities  and  among  corrupt  men  such 


432  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

a  woman  would  be  too  easily  led  astray,  and  in  this  philosophical 
age,  she  must  be  above  temptation  ;  she  must  know  in  advance 
what  may  be  said  of  her,  and  what  she  ought  to  think  of  it. 

Moreover,  subject  to  the  judgment  of  men,  she  ought  to 
merit  their  esteem  ;  she  ought,  above  all,  to  secure  the  esteem  of 
her  husband ;  she  ought  not  only  to  make  him  love  her  person, 
but  make  him  approve  her  conduct  ;  she  ought  to  justify  before 
the  public  the  choice  which  he  has  made,  and  make  her  husband 
honored  with  the  honor  which  is  paid  his  wife.  Now,  how  shall 
she  go  about  all  this  if  she  is  ignorant  of  our  institutions,  if  she 
knows  nothing  of  our  usages  and  our  social  customs,  if  she  knows 
neither  the  source  of  human  judgments  nor  the  passions  which 
determine  them  ?  When  she  depends  at  once  on  her  own  con- 
science and  the  opinions  of  others,  she  must  learn  to  compare 
these  two  rules,  to  reconcile  them,  and  to  prefer  the  first  only  when 
they  are  in  opposition.  She  becomes  the  judge  of  her  judges  ;  she 
decides  when  she  ought  to  submit  to  them  and  when  she  ought 
to  challenge  them.  Before  rejecting  or  admitting  their  prejudices 
she  weighs  them  ;  she  learns  to  ascend  to  their  source,  to  antici- 
pate them,  and  render  them  favorable  to  her ;  she  is  careful 
never  to  draw  censure  on  herself  when  her  duty  permits  her  to 
avoid  it.  Nothing  of  all  this  can  be  done  without  cultivating  her 
mind  and  her  reason. 

The  search  for  abstract  and  speculative  truths,  principles,  and 
scientific  axioms,  whatever  tends  to  general  ideas,  does  not  fall 
within  the  compass  of  women  ;  all  their  studies  ought  to  have 
reference  to  the  practical ;  it  is  for  them  to  make  the  application 
of  the  principles  which  man  has  discovered,  and  to  make  the 
observations  which  lead  man  to  the  establishment  of  principles. 
All  the  reflections  of  women  which  arc  not  immediately  connected 
with  their  duties  ought  to  be  directed  to  the  study  of  men  and  to 
that  pleasure-giving  knowledge  which  has  only  taste  for  its  object ; 
for  as  to  works  of  genius,  they  are  out  of  their  reach,  nor  have 
they  sufficient  accuracy  and  attention  to  succeed  in  the  exact 
sciences.  Woman,  who  is  weak,  and  who  sees  nothing  external, 
appreciates  and  judges  the  motive  powers  which  she  can  set  to 


THE  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  IDEAL  OF  WOMAN     433 

work  to  offset  her  weakness,  and  these  motive  powers  are  the  pas- 
sions of  men.  Whatever  her  sex  can  do  for  itself,  and  which  is 
necessary  or  agreeable  to  her,  she  must  have  the  art  of  making 
us  desire.1 


42.    THE   INFLUENCE   OF  EDUCATION  AND   SOCIAL  ENVI- 
RONMENT ON   WOMAN'S    CHARACTER2 

After  considering  the  historic  page  ...  I  have  sighed  when 
obliged  to  confess  that  either  nature  has  made  a  great  difference 
between  man  and  man,  or  that  the  civilization  which  has  hitherto 
taken  place  in  the  world  has  been  very  partial.  I  have  turned 
over  various  books  written  on  the  subject  of  education,  and 
patiently  observed  the  conduct  of  parents  and  the  management 
of  schools  ;  but  what  has  been  the  result  ?  —  a  profound  convic- 
tion that  the  neglected  education  of  my  fellow  creatures  is  the 
grand  source  of  the  misery  I  deplore ;  and  that  women,  in  par- 
ticular, are  rendered  weak  and  miserable  by  a  variety  of  concur- 
ring causes,  originating  from  one  hasty  conclusion.  The  conduct 
and  manners  of  women,  in  fact,  evidently  prove  that  their  minds 
are  not  in  a  healthy  state.  ...  I  attribute  this  to  a  false  system 
of  education,  gathered  from  the  books  written  on  this  subject  by 
men  who,  considering  females  rather  as  women  than  as  human 
creatures,  have  been  more  anxious  to  make  them  alluring  mis- 
tresses than  rational  wives ;  and  the  understanding  of  the  sex  has 
been  so  bubbled  by  this  specious  homage,  that  the  civilized  women 
of  the  present  century,  with  a  few  exceptions,  are  only  anxious  to 
inspire  love,  when  they  ought  to  cherish  a  nobler  ambition,  and 
by  their  abilities  and  virtues  exact  respect. 

1  This  seems   to  be  the  modern  "indirect-influence"  argument  against  the 
franchise  for  women  put  into  a  nutshell.  —  ED. 

2  By  Mary  Wollstonecraft.    Adapted  from  A  Vindication  of  the   Rights  of 
Women,  ist  edition,  pp.  i,  2,  32-33,  38-41,  87-91,  106-108,  330-335,  337-342.    Lon- 
don, 1792.    This  book  has  become,  with  Mill's  "  Subjection  of  Women,"  one  of 
the  two  classics  of  the  woman  movement  in  England.    The  extracts  here  given, 
in  spite  of  occasional  quaintness  of  style,  are  surprisingly  modern  in  point  of  view. 


434  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

THE  PREVAILING  OPINION  OF  SEXUAL  CHARACTER  DISCUSSED 

To  account  for,  and  excuse,  the  tyranny  of  man,  many  ingen- 
ious arguments  have  been  brought  forward  to  prove  that  the  two 
sexes,  in  the  acquirement  of  virtue,  ought  to  aim  at  attaining  a 
very  different  character :  or,  to  speak  explicitly,  women  are  not 
allowed  to  have  sufficient  strength  of  mind  to  acquire  what  really 
deserves  the  name  of  virtue.  Yet  it  should  seem,  allowing  them 
to  have  souls,  that  there  is  but  one  way  appointed  by  Providence 
to  lead  mankind  to  either  virtue  or  happiness. 

If  then  women  are  not  a  swarm  of  ephemeron  triflers,  why 
should  they  be  kept  in  ignorance  under  the  specious  name  of 
innocence  ?  .  .  .  Women  are  told  from  their  infancy,  and  taught 
by  the  example  of  their  mothers,  that  a  little  knowledge  of  human 
weakness,  justly  termed  cunning,  softness  or  temper,  outward 
obedience,  and  a  scrupulous  attention  to  a  puerile  kind  of  pro- 
priety, will  obtain  for  them  the  protection  of  man  ;  and  should 
they  be  beautiful,  everything  else  is  needless,  for  at  least  twenty 
years  of  their  life.  How  grossly  do  they  insult  us  who  advise  us 
to  render  ourselves  gentle,  domestic  brutes  ! 

I  may  be  accused  of  arrogance ;  still  I  must  declare,  what  I 
firmly  believe,  that  all  the  writers  on  the  subject  of  female  educa- 
tion and  manners,  from  Rousseau  to  Dr.  Gregory,1  have  contrib- 
uted to  render  women  more  artificial,  weak  characters  than  they 
otherwise  would  have  been,  and  consequently  more  useless  mem- 
bers of  society. 

Many  are  the  causes  that,  in  the  present  corrupt  state  of 
society,  contribute  to  enslave  women  by  cramping  their  under- 
standings and  sharpening  their  senses.  One,  perhaps,  that  silently 
does  more  mischief  than  all  the  rest,  is  their  disregard  of  order. 

To  do  everything  in  an  orderly  manner,  is  a  most  important 
precept,  which  women,  who,  generally  speaking,  receive  only  a 
disorderly  kind  of  education,  seldom  attend  to  with  that  degree  of 
exactness  that  men,  who  from  their  infancy  are  broken  into 
method,  observe.  This  negligent  kind  of  guesswork  .  .  .  prevents 

1  Legacy  to  his  Daughters,  1796. 


THE  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  IDEAL  OF  WOMAN     435 

their  generalizing  matters  of  fact  —  so  they  do  to-day  what  they 
did  yesterday  merely  because  they  did  it  yesterday. 

This  contempt  of  the  understanding  in  early  life  has  more 
baneful  consequences  than  is  commonly  supposed ;  for  the  little 
knowledge  which  women  of  strong  minds  attain,  is,  from  various 
circumstances,  of  a  more  desultory  kind  than  the  knowledge  of 
men,  and  it  is  acquired  more  by  sheer  observations  on  real  life, 
than  from  comparing  what  has  been  individually  observed  with 
the  results  of  experience  generalized  by  speculation.  Led  by 
their  dependent  situation  and  domestic  employments  more  into 
society,  what  they  learn  is  rather  by  snatches  ;  and  as  learning 
is  with  them,  in  general,  only  a  secondary  thing,  they  do  not 
pursue  any  one  branch  with  that  persevering  ardor  necessary 
to  give  vigor  to  the  faculties,  and  clearness  to  the  judgment. 
In  the  present  state  of  society  a  little  learning  is  required  to 
support  the  character  of  a  gentleman  ;  and  boys  are  obliged  to 
submit  to  a  few  years  of  discipline.  But  in  the  education  of 
women,  the  cultivation  of  the  understanding  is  always  subordi- 
nate to  the  acquirement  of  some  corporeal  accomplishment ;  even 
while  enervated  by  confinement  and  false  notions  of  modesty,  the 
body  is  prevented  from  attaining  that  grace  and  beauty  which 
relaxed  half-formed  limbs  never  exhibit.  Besides,  in  youth  their 
faculties  are  not  brought  forward  by  emulation  ;  and  having  no 
serious  scientific  study,  if  they  have  natural  sagacity  it  is  turned 
too  soon  on  life  and  manners. 

I  have  probably  had  an  opportunity  of  observing  more  girls  in 
their  infancy  than  J.  J.  Rousseau- — I  can  recollect  my  own  feel- 
ings, and  I  have  looked  steadily  around  me  ;  yet,  so  far  from 
coinciding  in  opinion  respecting  the  first  dawn  of  female  charac- 
ter, I  will  venture  to  affirm  that  a  girl  whose  spirits  have  not 
been  damped  by  inactivity,  or  innocence  tainted  by  false  shame, 
will  always  be  a  romp,  and  the  doll  will  never  excite  attention 
unless  confinement  allows  her  no  alternative.  Girls  and  boys,  in 
short,  would  play  harmlessly  together,  if  the  distinction  of  sex 
was  not  inculcated  long  before  nature  makes  any  difference.  Most 
of  the  women  in  the  circle  of  my  observation  who  have  acted 
like  rational  creatures  or  shown  any  vigor  of  intellect,  have 


436  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

accidentally  been  allowed  to  run  wild  —  as  some  of  the  elegant 
formers  of  the  fair  sex  would  insinuate. 

Women  are  everywhere  in  this  deplorable  state ;  for  in  order 
to  preserve  their  innocence,  as  ignorance  is  courteously  termed, 
truth  is  hidden  from  them,  and  they  are  made  to  assume  an 
artificial  character  before  their  faculties  have  acquired  any  strength. 
Taught  from  their  infancy  that  beauty  is  woman's  scepter,  the 
mind  shapes  itself  to  the  body,  and,  roaming  around  its  gilt  cage, 
only  seeks  to  adorn  its  prison.  Men  have  various  employments 
and  pursuits  which  engage  their  attention,  and  give  a  character 
to  the  opening  mind  ;  but  women,  confined  to  one,  and  having 
their  thoughts  constantly  directed  to  the  most  insignificant  part 
of  themselves,  seldom  extend  their  views  beyond  the  triumph  of 
the  hour. 

I  wish  to  sum  up  what  I  have  said  in  a  few  words,  for  I  here 
throw  down  my  gauntlet,  and  deny  the  existence  of  sexual  virtues, 
not  excepting  modesty.  For  man  and  woman,  truth,  if  I  under- 
stand the  meaning  of  the  word,  must  be  the  same  ;  yet  the  fanciful 
female  character  so  prettily  drawn  by  poets  and  novelists,  demand- 
ing the  sacrifice  of  truth  and  sincerity,  virtue  becomes  a  relative 
idea,  having  no  other  foundation  than  utility,  and  of  that  utility  men 
pretend  arbitrarily  to  judge,  shaping  it  to  their  own  convenience. 

Women,  I  allow,  have  very  different  duties  to  fulfill ;  but  they 
are  human  duties,  and  the  principles  that  should  regulate  the 
discharge  of  them,  I  sturdily  maintain,  must  be  the  same.  To 
become  respectable,  the  exercise  of  their  understanding  is  neces- 
sary ;  there  is  no  other  foundation  for  independence  of  character. 
I  mean  explicitly  to  say  that  they  must  only  bow  to  the  authority 
of  reason,  instead  of  being  the  modest  slaves  of  opinion.  .  .  . 
Allowing  women  to  be  rational  creatures,  they  should  be  incited 
to  acquire  virtues  of  their  own,  for  how  can  a  rational  being  be 
ennobled  by  anything  that  is  not  obtained  by  its  own  exertions  ? 

Women,  obtaining  power  by  unjust  means,  by  practicing  or 
fostering  vice,  become  either  abject  slaves  or  capricious  tyrants. 
They  lose  all  simplicity,  all  dignity  of  mind,  in  acquiring  power, 
and  act  as  men  are  observed  to  act  when  they  have  been  exalted 
by  the  same  means. 


THE  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  IDEAL  OF  WOMAN     437 

OF  THE  PERNICIOUS  EFFECTS  WHICH  ARISE  FROM  UNNATURAL 
DISTINCTIONS  IN  SOCIETY 

Women  are,  in  common  with  men,  rendered  weak  and  luxu- 
rious by  the  relaxing  pleasures  which  wealth  procures  ;  but  added 
to  this  they  are  .made  slaves  to  their  persons,  and  must  render 
them  alluring  that  man  may  lend  them  his  reason  to  guide  their 
tottering  steps  aright.  Or  should  they  be  ambitious,  they  must 
govern  their  tyrants  by  sinister  tricks,  for  without  rights  there 
cannot  be  any  incumbent  duties.  The  laws  respecting  women 
which  I  mean  to  discuss  in  a  future  part,1  make  an  absurd  unit 
of  a  man  and  his  wife  ;  and  then  by  the  easy  transition  of  con- 
sidering only  him  as  responsible,  she  is  reduced  to  a  mere 
cipher. 

The  being  who  discharges  the  duties  of  its  station  is  independ- 
ent ;  and  speaking  of  women  at  large,  their  first  duty  is  to  them- 
selves as  rational  creatures,  and  the  next,  in  point  of  importance, 
as  citizens,  is  that,  which  includes  so  many,  of  a  mother.  The 
rank  in  life  that  dispenses  with  their  fulfilling  this  duty,  nec- 
essarily degrades  them  by  making  them  mere  dolls.  Or,  should 
they  turn  to  something  more  important  than  merely  fitting 
drapery  upon  a  smooth  block,  their  minds  are  only  occupied 
by  some  soft  Platonic  attachment ;  or,  the  actual  management  of 
an  intrigue  may  keep  their  thoughts  in  motion  ;  for  when  they 
neglect  domestic  duties,  they  have  it  not  in  their  power  to  take 
the  field  to  march  and  countermarch  like  soldiers,  or  wrangle  in 
the  senate  to  keep  their  faculties  from  rusting.  ...  I  am  not 
going  to  advise  them  to  turn  their  distaff  into  a  musket,  though 
I  sincerely  wish  to  see  the  bayonet  converted  into  a  pruning  hook. 
I  only  recreated  an  imagination,  fatigued  from  contemplating  the 
vices  and  follies  which  all  proceed  from  a  feculent  stream  of 
wealth  that  muddied  the  pure  rills  of  natural  affection,  by  suppos- 
ing that  society  will  some  time  or  other  be  so  constituted  that 
man  must  necessarily  fulfill  the  duties  of  a  citizen,  or  be  despised, 
and  that  while  he  was  employed  in  any  of  the  departments  of 

1  This  projected  volume  on  the  political  and  legal  status  of  women  was  never 
published. —  ED. 


438  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

civil  life,  his  wife,  also  as  active  citizen,  should  be  equally  intent 
to  manage  her  family,  educate  her  children,  and  assist  her 
neighbors. 

But,  to  render  her  really  virtuous  and  useful,  she  must  not,  if 
she  discharge  her  civil  duties,  want,  individually,  the  protection 
of  the  civil  laws ;  she  must  not  be  dependent  on  her  husband's 
bounty  for  her  subsistence  during  his  life,  or  support  after  his 
death  —  for  how  can  a  being  be  generous  who  has  nothing  of 
his  own  ?  or,  virtuous,  who  is  not  free  ?  The  wife  in  the  present 
state  of  things  who  is  faithful  to  her  husband,  and  neither  suckles 
nor  educates  her  children,  scarcely  deserves  the  name  of  wife, 
and  has  no  right  to  that  of  citizen.  But  take  away  natural  rights, 
and  there  is  of  course  an  end  to  duties. 

Women  thus  infallibly  become  only  the  wanton  solace  of  men, 
when  they  are  so  weak  in  mind  and  body  that  they  cannot  exert 
themselves,  unless  to  pursue  some  frothy  pleasure,  or  to  invent 
some  frivolous  fashion.  What  can  be  a  more  melancholy  sight 
to  a  thinking  mind,  than  to  look  into  the  numerous  carriages  that 
drive  helter-skelter  about  this  metropolis  in  a  morning  full  of 
pale-faced  creatures  who  are  flying  from  themselves.  I  have  often 
wished,  with  Dr.  Johnson,  to  place  some  of  them  in  a  little  shop 
with  half  a  dozen  children  looking  up  into  their  languid  counte- 
nances for  support.  I  am  much  mistaken,  if  some  latent  vigor 
would  not  soon  give  health  and  spirit  to  their  eyes,  and  some  lines 
drawn  by  the  exercise  of  reason  on  their  blank  cheeks,  which  be- 
fore were  only  undulated  by  dimples,  might  restore  lost  dignity 
to  the  character,  or  rather  enable  it  to  attain  the  true  dignity  of 
its  nature.  Virtue  is  not  to  be  acquired  even  by  speculation, 
much  less  by  the  negative  supineness  which  wealth  naturally 
generates. 

I  cannot  help  lamenting  that  women  of  a  superior  cast  have 
not  a  road  open  by  which  they  can  pursue  more  extensive  plans 
of  usefulness  and  independence.  I  may  excite  laughter  by  drop- 
ping a  hint,  which  I  mean  to  pursue,  at  some  future  time,  for  I 
really  think  that  women  ought  to  have  representatives,  instead  of 
being  arbitrarily  governed  without  having  any  direct  share  allowed 
them  in  the  deliberations  of  government. 


THE  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  IDEAL  OF  WOMAN     439 

But  what  have  women  to  do  in  society  ?  I  may  be  asked,  but 
to  loiter  with  easy  grace ;  surely  you  would  not  condemn  them 
all  to  suckle  fools  and  chronicle  small  beer !  No.  Women  might 
certainly  study  the  art  of  healing,  and  be  physicians  as  well  as 
nurses.  They  might  also  study  politics,  and  settle  their  benevo- 
lence on  the  broadest  basis  ;  for  the  reading  of  history  will  scarcely 
be  more  useful  than  the  perusal  of  romances,  if  read  as  mere  bi- 
ography ;  if  the  character  of  the  time,  the  political  improvements, 
arts,  etc.  be  not  observed. 

Business  of  various  kinds  they  might  likewise  pursue,  if  they 
were  educated  in  a  more  orderly  manner,  which  might  save  many 
from  common  and  legal  prostitution.  Women  would  not  then 
marry  for  a  support,  as  men  accept  of  places  under  government, 
and  neglect  the  implied  duties  ;  nor  would  an  attempt  to  earn  their 
own  subsistence,  a  most  laudable  one !  sink  them  almost  to  the 
level  of  those  poor  abandoned  creatures  who  live  by  prostitution. 
For  are  not  milliners  and  mantua-makers  reckoned  the  next  class  ? 
The  few  employments  open  to  women,  so  far  from  being  liberal, 
are  menial ;  and  when  a  superior  education  enables  them  to  take 
charge  of  children  as  governesses,  they  are  not  treated  like  the 
tutors  of  sons,  though  even  clerical  tutors  are  not  always  treated  in' 
a  manner  calculated  to  render  them  respectable  in  the  eyes  of  their 
pupils,  to  say  nothing  of  the  private  comfort  of  the  individual. 

It  is  a  melancholy  truth ;  yet  such  is  the  blessed  effect  of  civi- 
lization !  the  most  respectable  women  are  the  most  oppressed ;  and, 
unless  they  have  understanding  far  superior  to  the  common  run 
of  understandings,  taking  in  both  sexes,  they  must,  from  being 
treated  like  contemptible  beings,  become  contemptible.  How 
many  women  thus  waste  life  away,  the  prey  of  discontent,  who 
might  have  stood  erect,  supported  by  their  own  industry,  instead 
of  hanging  their  heads  surcharged  with  the  dew  of  sensibility ! 

Would  men  but  generously  snap  our  chains,  and  be  content 
with  rational  fellowship  instead  of  slavish  obedience,  they  would 
find  us  more  observant  daughters,  more  affectionate  sisters,  more 
faithful  wives,  more  reasonable  mothers  —  in  a  word,  better  citizens. 
We  should  then  love  them  with  true  affection,  because  we  should 
learn  to  respect  ourselves. 


440  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

43.    DECLARATION  OF  SENTIMENTS1 
ADOPTED  BY  THE  FIRST  WOMAN'S  RIGHTS  CONVENTION,   1848 

The  Seneca  County  Courier,  a  semiweekly  journal,  of  July  14, 
1848,  contained  the  following  announcement: 

SENECA  FALLS  CONVENTION 

Woman's  Rights  Convention. — A  convention  to  discuss  the  social,  civil,  and 
religious  condition  and  rights  of  woman,  will  be  held  in  the  Wesleyan  Chapel, 
at  Seneca  Falls,  N.  Y.,  on  Wednesday  and  Thursday,  the  igth  and  2oth  of  July, 
current;  commencing  at  ten  o'clock  A.  M.  During  the  first  day,  the  meeting 
will  be  exclusively  for  women,  who  are  earnestly  invited  to  attend.  The  public 
generally  are  invited  to  be  present  on  the  second  day,  when  Lucretia  Mott,  of 
Philadelphia,  and  other  ladies  and  gentlemen,  will  address  the  convention. 

This  call,  without  signature,  was  issued  by  Lucretia  Mott,  Martha 
C.  Wright,  Elizabeth  Cady  Stanton,  and  Mary  Ann  McClintock. 
They  had  often  discussed  "  the  propriety  of  holding  a  woman's 
convention."  They  now  decided  to  put  their  long-talked-of  reso- 
lution into  action.  On  Sunday  morning  they  met  to  write  their 
declaration,  resolutions,  and  to  consider  subjects  for  speeches.  As 
the  convention  was  to  assemble  in  three  days,  the  time  was  short 
for  such  productions  ;  but  having  no  experience  in  the  modus 
operandi  of  getting  up  conventions,  nor  in  that  kind  of  literature, 
they  were  quite  innocent  of  the  herculean  labors  they  proposed. 
On  the  first  attempt  to  frame  a  resolution,  to  crowd  a  complete 
thought,  clearly  and  concisely,  into  three  lines,  they  felt  as  help- 
less and  hopeless  as  if  they  had  been  suddenly  asked  to  construct 
a  steam  engine.  The  reports  of  Peace,  Temperance,  and  Anti- 
Slavery  conventions  were  examined,  but  all  alike  seemed  too  tame 
and  pacific  for  the  inauguration  of  a  rebellion  such  as  the  world 
had  never  before  seen.  They  knew  women  had  wrongs,  but  how 
to  state  them  was  the  difficulty,  and  this  was  increased  from  the 
fact  that  they  themselves  were  fortunately  organized  and  condi- 
tioned ;  they  were  neither  "sour  old  maids,"  "childless  women," 
nor  "  divorced  wives,"  as  the  newspapers  declared  them  to  be. 

1  By  Elizabeth  Cady  Stanton,  Susan  15.  Anthony,  and  Matilda  Joslyn  Gage. 
Adapted  from  the  History  of  Woman  Suffrage,  Vol.  I,  pp.  63-73.  New  York,  iSSi. 


THE  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  IDEAL  OF  WOMAN     441 

After  much  delay,  one  of  the  circle  took  up  the  Declaration  of 
1776,  and  read  it  aloud  with  much  spirit  and  emphasis,  and  it 
was  at  once  decided  to  adopt  the  historic  document,  with  some 
slight  changes  such  as  substituting  "  all  men  "  for  "  King 
George."  Knowing  that  women  must  have  more  to  complain  of 
than  men  under  any  circumstances  possibly  could,  and  seeing  the 
Fathers  had  eighteen  grievances,  a  protracted  search  was  made 
through  statute  books,  church  usages,  and  the  customs  of  society 
to  find  that  exact  number.  Several  well-disposed  men  assisted  in 
collecting  the  grievances,  until,  with  the  announcement  of  the 
eighteenth,  the  women  felt  they  had  enough  to  go  before  the 
world  with  a  good  case.  One  youthful  lord  remarked,  "Your 
grievances  must  be  grievous  indeed,  when  you  are  obliged  to  go 
to  books  in  order  to  find  them  out." 

The  eventful  day  dawned  at  last,  and  crowds  in  carriages  and 
on  foot  wended  their  way  to  the  Wesleyan  Church.  It  had  been 
decided  to  have  no  men  present,  but  as  they  were  already  on  the 
spot,  and  as  the  women  who  must  take  the  responsibility  of 
organizing  the  meeting,  and  leading  the  discussions,  shrank  from 
doing  either,  it  was  decided,  in  a  hasty  council  round  the  altar, 
that  this  was  an  occasion  when  men  might  make  themselves 
preeminently  useful.  It  was  agreed  they  should  remain,  and  take 
the  laboring  oar  through  the  Convention. 

THE  DECLARATION  OF  SENTIMENTS 

When,  in  the  course  of  human  events,  it  becomes  necessary  for 
one  portion  of  the  family  of  man  to  assume  among  the  people  of 
the  earth  a  position  different  from  that  which  they  have  hitherto 
occupied,  but  one  to  which  the  laws  of  nature  and  of  nature's 
God  entitle  them,  a  decent  respect  to  the  opinions  of  mankind 
requires  that  they  should  declare  the  causes  that  impel  them  to 
such  a  course. 

We  hold  these  truths  to  be  self-evident :  that  all  men  and 
women  are  created  equal ;  that  they  are  endowed  by  their  Creator 
with  certain  inalienable  rights  ;  that  among  these  are  life,  lib- 
erty, and  the  pursuit  of  happiness  ;  that  to  secure  these  rights 


442  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

governments  are  instituted,  deriving  their  just  powers  from  the 
consent  of  the  governed.  Whenever  any  form  of  government 
becomes  destructive  of  these  ends,  it  is  the  right  of  those  who 
suffer  from  it  to  refuse  allegiance  to  it,  and  to  insist  upon  the 
institution  of  a  new  government,  laying  its  foundation  on  such 
principles,  and  organizing  its  powers  in  such  form,  as  to  them 
shall  seem  most  likely  to  effect  their  safety  and  happiness.  Pru- 
dence, indeed,  will  dictate  that  governments  long  established 
should  not  be  changed  for  light  and  transient  causes  ;  and  accord- 
ingly all  experience  hath  shown  that  mankind  are  more  disposed 
to  suffer,  while  evils  are  sufferable,  than  to  right  themselves  by 
abolishing  the  forms  to  which  they  were  accustomed.  But  when  a 
long  train  of  abuses  and  usurpations,  pursuing  invariably  the  same 
object,  evinces  a  design  to  reduce  them  under  absolute  despotism, 
it  is  their  duty  to  throw  off  such  government,  and  to  provide  new 
guards  for  their  future  security.  Such  has  been  the  patient  suffer- 
ance of  the  women  under  this  government,  and  such  is  now  the 
necessity  which  constrains  them  to  demand  the  equal  station  to 
which  they  are  entitled. 

The  history  of  mankind  is  a  history  of  repeated  injuries  and 
usurpations  on  the  part  of  man  toward  woman,  having  in  direct 
object  the  establishment  of  an  absolute  tyranny  over  her.  To 
prove  this,  let  facts  be  submitted  to  a  candid  world. 

He  has  never  permitted  her  to  exercise  her  inalienable  right 
to  the  elective  franchise. 

He  has  compelled  her  to  submit  to  laws,  in  the  formation  of 
which  she  had  no  voice. 

He  has  withheld  from  her  rights  which  are  given  to  the  most 
ignorant  and  degraded  men  —  both  natives  and  foreigners. 

Having  deprived  her  of  this  first  right  of  a  citizen,  the  elective 
franchise,  thereby  leaving  her  without  representation  in  the  halls 
of  legislation,  he  has  oppressed  her  on  all  sides. 

He  has  made  her,  if  married,  in  the  eye  of  the  law,  civilly  dead. 

He  has  taken  from  her  all  right  in  property,  even  to  the 
wages  she  earns. 

He  has  made  her,  morally,  an  irresponsible  being,  as  she  can 
commit  many  crimes  with  impunity,  provided  they  be  done  in 


THE  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  IDEAL  OF  WOMAN     443 

the  presence  of  her  husband.  In  the  covenant  of  marriage,  she  is 
compelled  to  promise  obedience  to  her  husband,  he  becoming,  to 
all  intents  and  purposes,  her  master  —  the  law  giving  him  power 
to  deprive  her  of  her  liberty,  and  to  administer  chastisement. 

He  has  so  framed  the  laws  of  divorce,  as  to  what  shall  be  the 
proper  causes,  and  in  case  of  separation,  to  whom  the  guardian- 
ship of  the  children  shall  be  given,  as  to  be  wholly  regardless  of 
the  happiness  of  women  —  the  law,  in  all  cases,  going  upon  a 
false  supposition  of  the  supremacy  of  man,  and  giving  all  power 
into  his  hands. 

After  depriving  her  of  all  rights  as  a  married  woman,  if  single, 
and  the  owner  of  property,  he  has  taxed  her  to  support  a 
government  which  recognizes  her  only  when  her  property  can 
be  made  profitable  to  it. 

He  has  monopolized  nearly  all  the  profitable  employments,  and 
from  those  she  is  permitted  to  follow,  she  receives  but  a  scanty 
remuneration.  He  closes  against  her  all  the  avenues  to  wealth 
and  distinction  which  he  considers  most  honorable  to  himself. 
As  a  teacher  of  theology,  medicine,  or  law,  she  is  not  known. 

He  has  denied  her  the  facilities  for  obtaining  a  thorough 
education,  all  colleges  being  closed  against  her. 

He  allows  her,  in  Church,  as  well  as  State,  but  a  subordinate 
position,  claiming  Apostolic  authority  for  her  exclusion  from  the 
ministry,  and,  with  some  exceptions,  from  any  public  participation 
in  the  affairs  of  the  Church. 

He  has  created  a  false  public  sentiment  by  giving  to  the  world 
a  different  code  of  morals  for  men  and  women,  by  which  moral 
delinquencies  which  exclude  women  from  society,  are  not  only 
tolerated,  but  deemed  of  little  account  in  man. 

He  has  usurped  the  prerogative  of  Jehovah  himself,  claiming 
it  as  his  right  to  assign  for  her  a  sphere  of  action,  when  that 
belongs  to  her  conscience  and  to  her  God. 

He  has  endeavored,  in  every  way  that  he  could,  to  destroy  her 
confidence  in  her  own  powers,  to  lessen  her  self-respect,  and  to 
make  her  willing  to  live  a  dependent  and  abject  life. 

Now,  in  view  of  this  entire  disfranchisement  of  one  half  the 
people  of  this  country,  their  social  and  religious  degradation  — 


444  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

in  view  of  the  unjust  laws  above  mentioned,  and  because  women 
do  feel  themselves  aggrieved,  oppressed,  and  fraudulently  deprived 
of  their  most  sacred  rights,  we  insist  that  they  have  immediate 
admission  to  all  the  rights  and  privileges  which  belong  to  them 
as  citizens  of  the  United  States. 

In  entering  upon  the  great  work  before  us,  we  anticipate  no 
small  amount  of  misconception,  misrepresentation,  and  ridicule ; 
but  we  shall  use  every  instrumentality  within  our  power  to  effect 
our  object.  We  shall  employ  agents,  circulate  tracts,  petition  the 
State  and  National  legislatures,  and  endeavor  to  enlist  the  pulpit 
and  the  press  on  our  behalf.  We  hope  this  Convention  will 
be  followed  by  a  series  of  Conventions  embracing  every  part  of 
the  country. 

The  following  resolutions  were  also  adopted  : 

Whereas,  The  great  precept  of  nature  is  conceded  to  be,  that 
"man  shall  pursue  his  own  true  and  substantial  happiness." 
Blackstone  in  his  Commentaries  remarks,  that  this  law  of  Nature 
being  coeval  with  mankind,  and  dictated  by  God  himself,  is  of 
course  superior  in  obligation  to  any  other.  It  is  binding  over  all 
the  globe,  in  all  countries  and  at  all  times  ;  no  human  laws  are 
of  any  validity  if  contrary  to  this,  and  such  of  them  as  are  valid, 
derive  all  their  force,  and  all  their  validity,  and  all  their  authority, 
mediately  and  immediately,  from  this  original ;  therefore, 

Resolved,  That  such  laws  as  conflict,  in  any  way,  with  the  true 
and  substantial  happiness  of  woman,  are  contrary  to  the  great 
precept  of  nature  and  of  no  validity,  for  this  is  "superior  in 
obligation  to  any  other." 

Resolved,  That  all  laws  which  prevent  woman  from  occupying 
such  a  station  in  society  as  her  conscience  shall  dictate,  or  which 
place  her  in  a  position  inferior  to  that  of  man,  are  contrary  to 
the  great  precept  of  nature,  and  therefore  of  no  force  or  authority. 

Resolved,  That  woman  is  man's  equal  —  was  intended  to  be  so 
by  the  Creator,  and  the  highest  good  of  the  race  demands  that 
she  should  be  recognized  as  such. 

Resolved,  That  the  women  of  this  country  ought  to  be  en- 
lightened in  regard  to  the  laws  under  which  they  live,  that  they 
may  no  longer  publish  their  degradation  by  declaring  themselves 


THE  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  IDEAL  OF  WOMAN     445 

satisfied  with  their  present  position,  nor  their  ignorance,  by  assert- 
ing that  they  have  all  the  rights  they  want. 

Resolved,  That  inasmuch  as  man,  while  claiming  for  himself 
intellectual  superiority,  does  accord  to  woman  moral  superiority, 
it  is  preeminently  his  duty  to  encourage  her  to  speak  and  teach, 
as  she  has  an  opportunity,  in  all  religious  assemblies. 

Resolved,  That  the  same  amount  of  virtue,  delicacy,  and  re- 
finement of  behavior  that  is  required  of  woman  in  the  social 
state,  should  also  be  required  of  man,  and  the  same  transgres- 
sions should  be  visited  with  equal  severity  on  both  man  and 
woman. 

Resolved,  That  the  objection  of  indelicacy  and  impropriety, 
which  is  so  often  brought  against  woman  when  she  addresses  a 
public  audience,  comes  with  a  very  ill  grace  from  those  who  en- 
courage, by  their  attendance,  her  appearance  on  the  stage,  in  the 
concert,  or  in  feats  of  the  circus. 

Resolved,  That  woman  has  too  long  rested  satisfied  in  the  cir- 
cumscribed limits  which  corrupt  customs  and  a  perverted  appli- 
cation of  the  Scriptures  have  marked  out  for  her,  and  that  it  is 
time  she  should  move  in  the  enlarged  sphere  which  her  great 
Creator  has  assigned  her. 

Resolved,  That  it  is  the  duty  of  the  women  of  this  country  to 
secure  to  themselves  their  sacred  right  to  the  elective  franchise. 

Resolved,  That  the  equality  of  human  rights  results  necessarily 
from  the  fact  of  the  identity  of  the  race  in  capabilities  and 
responsibilities. 

Resolved,  therefore,  That,  being  invested  by  the  Creator  with 
the  same  capabilities,  and  the  same  consciousness  of  responsibility 
for  their  exercise,  it  is  demonstrably  the  right  and  duty  of  woman, 
equally  with  man,  to  promote  every  righteous  cause  by  every 
righteous  means  ;  and  especially  in  regard  to  the  great  subjects 
of  morals  and  religion,  it  is  self-evidently  her  right  to  participate 
with  her  brother  in  teaching  them,  both  in  private  and  in  public, 
by  writing  and  by  speaking,  by  any  instrumentalities  proper  to  be 
used,  and  in  any  assemblies  proper  to  be  held  ;  and  this  being  a 
self-evident  truth  growing  out  of  the  divinely  implanted  principles 
of  human  nature,  any  custom  or  authority  adverse  to  it,  whether 


446  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

modern  or  wearing  the  hoary  sanction  of  antiquity,  is  to  be  re- 
garded as  a  self-evident  falsehood,  and  at  war  with  mankind. 

At  the  last  session  Lucretia  Mott  offered  and  spoke  to  the 
following  resolution  : 

Resolved,  That  the  speedy  success  of  our  cause  depends  upon 
the  zealous  and  untiring -efforts  of  both  men  and  women,  for  the 
overthrow  of  the  monopoly  of  the  pulpit,  and  for  the  securing  to 
woman  an  equal  participation  with  men  in  the  various  trades, 
professions,  and  commerce. 

The  only  resolution  that  was  not  unanimously  adopted  was  the 
ninth,  urging  the  women  of  the  country  to  secure  to  themselves 
the  elective  franchise.  Those  who  took  part  in  the  debate  feared 
a  demand  for  the  right  to  vote  would  defeat  others  they  deemed 
more  rational  and  make  the  whole  movement  ridiculous. 

Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  the  Declaration  and  the  resolutions 
in  the  very  first  Convention,  demanded  what  all  the  most  radical 
friends  of  the  movement  have  since  claimed  —  such  as  equal 
rights  in  the  universities,  in  the  trades  and  professions ;  the 
right  to  vote ;  to  share  in  all  political  offices,  honors,  and  emol- 
uments ;  to  complete  equality  in  marriage,  to  personal  freedom, 
property,  wages,  children ;  to  make  contracts ;  to  sue,  and  be 
sued ;  and  to  testify  in  courts  of  justice.1 

1  Very  interesting  contemporary  press  comments  upon  the  Convention  and  its 
proceedings  may  be  found  in  the  History  of  Woman  Suffrage,  Vol.  I,  Appendix. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN 

Position  of  women  under  the  English  common  law,  448.  —  Woman  suffrage, 
452.  —  Mill's  classic  argument  for  woman  suffrage,  452.  —  The  modern  eco- 
nomic argument  for  equal  suffrage,  466.  —  A  statement  of  the  case  against  equal 

suffrage,  478 

[Blackstone  published  his  Commentaries  in  1765.  The  legal 
status  of  women  in  England  remained  substantially  as  he  stated 
it  until  a  beginning  of  a  slow  reform  was  made  by  the  first  Mar- 
ried Women's  Property  Act  in  1870  —  followed  by  further  reforms 
in  1874,  1882,  1893,  and  1907.  In  the  United  States  the  first 
significant  reform  of  the  legal  disabilities  of  married  women  was 
made  in  New  York  in  1848,  but  no  lasting  reform  was  made  in 
that  state  until  1860,  and  the  movement  to  grant  married  women 
the  right  of  contract,  to  own  and  control  property,  etc.,  did  not 
gain  headway  in  the  country  at  large  until  after  the  Civil  War. 
The  brutal  injustices  to  which  women  were  subjected  under  the 
old  law,  and  which  they  still  may  be  called  upon  to  endure  in 
some  belated  States,1  was  a  powerful  stimulus  to  the  early 
women 's-rights  campaigns,  although  on  the  surface  the  move- 
ment in  this  country  started  as  a  by-product  of  the  antislavery 
agitation  in  the  early  4o's.  That  the  early  ideals  of  feminism 
were  not  concerned,  any  more  than  those  of  to-day,  merely  with 
political  rights  is  clear.  Women  have  sought  the  franchise  first 
as  a  right  —  a  means  of  protection  —  and  latterly  as  a  means  to 
larger  social  service  —  whether  advisedly  or  not  must  be  left 
to  the  student  of  the  question.  While  the  suffrage  movement, 
from  the  granting  of  the  right  to  vote  for  poor-law  guardians  in 

1  In  1911  there  were,  for  instance,  still  seven  states  in  which  the  father  could 
by  will  prevent  the  mother  from  being  the  guardian  of  her  own  children  after  his 
death.  There  were  twenty-four  states  in  which  the  mother  during  the  lifetime  of 
the  father  had  no  legal  right  whatever  in  the  control  of  the  children,  that  is, 
states  in  which  the  father  was  the  sole  guardian. 

447 


448  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

England,  in  1834,  and -for  school  trustees  in  Kentucky,  in  1838, 
was  of  slow  growth,  it  has  now,  for  good  or  ill,  become  a  power- 
ful world-wide  movement.  The  change  in  the  character  of  the 
chief  line  of  argument  for  equal  suffrage  is  shown  in  the  two 
selections  here  given,  the  one  from  Mill,  the  other  from  a  recent 
campaign  pamphlet,  and  the  arguments  which  in  one  shape  or 
another  have  been  urged  against  it  from  the  first  are  shown  in 
their  most  unmistakable  form  in  the  selection  from  the  historian 
Parkman.1] 

44.   THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN  UNDER  THE  COMMON  LAW2 

By  marriage  the  husband  and  wife  are  one  person  in  law :  that 
is,  the  very  being  or  legal  existence  of  the  woman  is  suspended 
during  the  marriage,  or  at  least  is  incorporated  and  consolidated 
into  that  of  the  husband  :  under  whose  wing,  protection,  and 
cover,  she  performs  everything ;  and  is  therefore  called  in  our 
law-French  a  feme  covert,  fccmina  viro  co-opcrta  ;  is  said  to  be 
covert  baron,  or  under  the  protection  and  influence  of  her  hus- 
band, her  baron,  or  lord ;  and  her  condition  during  her  marriage  is 
called  her  coverture.  Upon  this  principle,  of  an  union  of  person 
in  husband  and  wife,  depend  most  of  the  legal  rights,  duties,  and 
disabilities,  that  either  of  them  acquire  by  the  marriage.  I  speak 
not  at  present  of  the  rights  of  property,  but  of  such  as  are  merely 
personal.  For  this  reason  a  man  cannot  grant  anything  to  his 
wife,  or  enter  into  covenant  with  her,  for  the  grant  would  be  to 
suppose  her  separate  existence  :  and  to  covenant  with  her  would 
be  only  to  covenant  with  himself  :  and  therefore  it  is  also  gener- 
ally true  that  all  compacts  made  between  husband  and  wife,  when 
single,  are  voided  by  the  intermarriage.  A  woman  may  indeed  be 

1  Full  suffrage  has  been  granted  to  women  on  equal  terms  with  men  in  the 
following  states  and  countries:   Wyoming,  1869;   Colorado,  1893;  New  Zealand, 
1893;   South  Australia,  1895;    Utah,  1896;    Idaho,  1896;  West  Australia,  1900; 
The  Australian    Federation,   1902;   New   South   Wales.    1902;   Tasmania,   1904; 
Queensland,  1905;   Finland,  1906;  Victoria,  1908;  Washington,  1910;  California, 
1911;   Oregon,  1912;   Kansas,  1912;  Arizona,  1912;   Alaska.  191,;   Norway,  1913; 
Montana,  1914;   Nevada,  1914;   Manitoba.  1916;   Alberta,  1916. 

2  I>y  \Villiam    lilackstone.     From    Commentaries   on    the    Laws    of    England, 
I5th  edition,  Vol.  I,  pp.  441-445.     London,  1809.     First  published  in    1765. 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     449 

attorney  for  her  husband  ;  for  that  implies  no  separation  from, 
but  is  rather  a  representation  of,  her  lord.  And  a  husband  may 
also  bequeath  anything  to  his  wife  by  will ;  for  that  cannot  take 
effect  till  the  coverture  is  determined  by  his  death.  The  husband 
is  bound  to  provide  his  wife  with  necessaries  by  law,  as  much  as 
himself ;  and  if  she  contracts  debts  for  them,  he  is  obliged  to  pay 
them ;  but  for  anything  besides  necessaries  he  is  not  chargeable. 
Also  if  a  wife  elopes,  and  lives  with  another  man,  the  husband 
is  not  chargeable  even  for  necessaries  ;  at  least  if  the  person  who 
furnishes  them  is  sufficiently  apprised  of  her  elopement.  If  the 
wife  be  indebted  before  marriage,  the  husband  is  bound  after- 
wards to  pay  the  debt ;  for  he  has  adopted  her  and  her  circum- 
stances together.  If  the  wife  be  injured  in  her  person  or  property, 
she  can  bring  no  action  for  redress  without  her  husband's  con- 
currence, and  in  his  name  as  well  as  her  own  :  neither  can  she 
be  sued,  without  making  the  husband  a  defendant.  There 
is  indeed  one  case  where  the  wife  shall  sue  and  be  sued  as  a 
feme  sole,  viz.  where  the  husband  has  abjured  the  realm,  or  is 
banished,  for  then  he  is  dead  in  law ;  and  the  husband  being 
thus  disabled  to  sue  for  or  defend  the  wife,  it  would  be  most 
unreasonable  if  she  had  no  remedy,  or  could  make  no  defense  at 
all.  In  criminal  prosecutions,  it  is  true,  the  wife  may  be  indicted 
and  punished  separately  ;  for  the  union  is  only  a  civil  union. 
But,  in  trials  of  any  sort,  they  are  not  allowed  to  be  evidence  for, 
or  against,  each  other :  partly  because  it  is  impossible  their  testi- 
mony should  be  indifferent ;  but  principally  because  of  the  union 
of  person  :  and  therefore,  if  they  were  admitted  to  be  witnesses 
for  each  other,  they  would  contradict  one  maxim  of  law,  "nemo 
in  prop ria  causa  tcstis  esse  dcbet ;"  and  if  against  each  other, 
they  would  contradict  another  maxim,  "nemo  tcnetur  scipsinn 
accnsare."  But,  where  the  offense  is  directly  against  the  person 
of  the  wife,  this  rule  has  been  usually  dispensed  with  :  and  there- 
fore, by  statute  3  Hen.  VII.  c.  2,  in  case  a  woman  be  forcibly 
taken  away,  and  married,  she  may  be  a  witness  against  such  her 
husband,  in  order  to  convict  him  of  felony.  For  in  this  case  she 
can  with  no  propriety  be  reckoned  his  wife ;  because  a  main 
ingredient,  her  consent,  was  wanting  to  the  contract :  and  also 


450  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

there  is  another  maxim  of  law,  that  no  man  shall  take  advantage 
of  his  own  wrong ;  which  the  ravisher  here  would  do,  if  by 
forcibly  marrying  a  woman,  he  could  prevent  her  from  being 
a  witness,  who  is  perhaps  the  only  witness,  to  that  very  fact. 

In  the  civil  law  the  husband  and  wife  are  considered  as  two 
distinct  persons  ;  and  may  have  separate  estates,  contracts,  debts, 
and  injuries  :  and  therefore  in  our  ecclesiastical  courts  a  woman 
may  sue  and  be  sued  without  her  husband. 

But,  though  our  law  in  general  considers  man  and  wife  as  one 
person,  yet  there  are  some  instances  in  which  she  is  separately 
considered ;  as  inferior  to  him  and  acting  by  his  compulsion. 
And  therefore  all  deeds  executed,  and  acts  done,  by  her,  during 
her  coverture,  are  void ;  except  it  be  a  fine  or  the  like  matter  of 
record,  in  which  case  she  must  be  solely  and  secretly  examined, 
to  learn  if  her  act  be  voluntary.  She  cannot  by  will  devise  lands 
to  her  husband,  unless  under  special  circumstances ;  for  at  the 
time  of  making  it  she  is  supposed  to  be  under  his  coercion. 
And  in  some  felonies,  and  other  inferior  crimes,  committed  by 
her,  through  restraint  of  her  husband,  the  law  excuses  her  :  but 
this  extends  not  to  treason  or  murder. 

The  husband  also  (by  the  old  law)  might  give  his  wife  moder- 
ate correction.  For,  as  he  is  to  answer  for  her  behavior,  the  law 
thought  it  reasonable  to  intrust  him  with  this  power  of  restrain- 
ing her,  by  domestic  chastisement,  in  the  same  moderation  that 
a  man  is  allowed  to  correct  his  apprentices  or  children  ;  for  whom 
the  master  or  parent  is  also  liable  in  some  cases  to  answer.  But 
this  power  of  correction  was  confined  within  reasonable  bounds, 
and  the  husband  was  prohibited  from  using  any  violence  to  his 
wife,  aliter  quam  ad  inrum,  ex  causa  rcgiminis  et  castigationis 
nxoris  snac,  licitc  et  rationabiliter  pertinet.  The  civil  law  gave 
the  husband  the  same,  or  a  larger,  authority  over  his  wife  :  allow- 
ing him,  for  some  misdemeanors,  flagcllis  et  fustibus  acritcr 
vcrberare  uxorcm  ;  for  others,  only  modicum  castigationem  adJii- 
berc.  But,  with  us  in  the  politer  reign  of  Charles  the  Second, 
this  power  of  coercion  began  to  be  doubted  :  and  a  wife  may 
now  have  security  of  the  peace  against  her  husband ;  or,  in  return, 
a  husband  against  his  wife.  Yet  the  lower  rank  of  people,  who 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     451 

were  always  fond  of  the  old  common  law,  still  claim  and  exert 
their  ancient  privilege ;  and  the  courts  of  law  still  permit  a  hus- 
band to  restrain  a  wife  of  her  liberty,  in  case  of  any  gross 
misbehavior. 

These  are  the  chief  legal  effects  of  marriage  during  the  cover- 
ture ;  upon  which  we  may  observe,  that  even  the  disabilities  which 
the  wife  lies  under  are  for  the  most  part  intended  for  her  pro- 
tection and  benefit.  So  great  a  favorite  is  the  female  sex  of  the 
laws  of  England. 

[How  great  a  "favorite"  the  female  sex  was  of  the  law  of 
England  is  brought  out  by  Edward  Christian,  the  editor  of  this 
edition  of  the  Commentaries,  in  a  footnote  :] 

Nothing,  I  apprehend,  would  more  conciliate  the  good  will  of  the  student  in 
favor  of  the  laws  of  England,  than  the  persuasion  that  they  had  shown  a  par- 
tiality to  the  female  sex.  But  I  am  not  so  much  in  love  with  my  subject  as  to 
be  inclined  to  leave  it  in  possession  of  a  glory  which  it  may  not  fully  deserve. 
In  addition  to  what  has  been  observed  in  this  chapter,  by  the  learned  Com- 
mentator, I  shall  here  state  some  of  the  principal  differences  in  the  English 
law,  respecting  the  two  sexes ;  and  I  shall  leave  it  to  the  reader  to  determine 
on  which  side  is  the  balance,  and  how  far  this  compliment  is  supported  by  truth. 

Husband  and  wife,  in  the  language  of  the  law,  are  styled  baron  and  feme:  the 
word  baron,  or  lord,  attributes  to  the  husband  not  a  very  courteous  superiority. 
But  we  might  be  inclined  to  think  this  merely  an  unmeaning  technical  phrase, 
if  we  did  not  recollect,  that  if  the  baron  kills  his  feme,  it  is  the  same  as  if  he 
had  killed  a  stranger  or  any  other  person  ;  but  if  the  feme  kills  her  baron,  it 
is  regarded  by  the  laws  a  much  more  atrocious  crime ;  as  she  not  only  breaks 
through  the  restraints  of  humanity  and  conjugal  affection,  but  throws  off  all 
subjection  to  the  authority  of  her  husband.  And  therefore  the  law  denomi- 
nates her  crime  a  species  of  treason,  and  condemns  her  to  the  same  punish- 
ment as  if  she  had  killed  the  king.  And  for  every  species  of  treason  (though 
in  petit  treason  the  punishment  of  men  was  only  to  be  drawn  and  hanged)  till 
the  30  Geo.  1 1 1 .  c.  48  the  sentence  of  women  was  to  be  drawn  and  burnt  alive. 

By  the  common  law  all  women  were  denied  the  benefit  of  clergy  ;  and  till 
the  3  and  4  W.  &  M.  c.  9  they  received  the  sentence  of  death,  and  might 
have  been  executed,  for  the  first  offense  in  simple  larceny,  bigamy,  man- 
slaughter, etc.,  however  learned  they  were,  merely  because  their  sex  precluded 
the  possibility  of  their  taking  holy  orders ;  though  a  man  who  could  read  was 
for  the  same  crime  subject  only  to  burning  in  the  hand  and  a  few  months 
imprisonment. 

These  are  the  principal  distinctions  in  criminal  matters.  Now  let  us  see  how 
the  account  stands  with  regard  to  civil  rights. 


452  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Intestate  personal  property  is  equally  divided  between  males  and  females ; 
but  a  son,  though  younger  than  all  his  sisters,  is  heir  to  the  whole  of  real 
property. 

A  woman's  personal  property,  by  marriage,  becomes  absolutely  her  hus- 
band's which  at  his  death  he  may  leave  entirely  away  from  her ;  but  if  he 
dies  without  will  she  is  entitled  to  one  third  of  his  personal  property,  if  he 
has  children  :  if  not,  to  one  half.  In  the  province  of  York  to  four  ninths  or 
three  fourths. 

By  the  marriage,  the  husband  is  absolutely  master  of  the  wife's  lands  during 
coverture ;  and  if  he  has  had  a  living  child,  and  survives  the  wife,  he  retains 
the  whole  of  those  lands,  if  they  are  estates  of  inheritance,  during  his  life :  but 
the  wife  is  entitled  only  to  dower,  or  one  third,  if  she  survives,  out  of  the  husband's 
estates  of  inheritance :  but  this  she  has  whether  she  has  had  a  child  or  not. 

But  a  husband  can  be  a  tenant  by  curtesy  of  the  trust  estates  of  the  wife, 
though  the  wife  cannot  be  endowed  of  the  trust  estates  of  the  husband. 

With  regard  to  the  property  of  women,  there  is  taxation  without  repre- 
sentation :  for  they  pay  taxes  without  having  the  liberty  of  voting  for  rep- 
resentatives ;  and  indeed  there  seems  at  present  no  substantial  reason  why 
single  women  should  be  denied  this  privilege.  Though  the  chastity  of  women 
is  protected  from  violence,  yet  a  parent  can  have  no  reparation,  by  our  law, 
from  the  seducer  of  his  daughter's  virtue,  but  by  stating  that  she  is  his  servant, 
and  that  by  the  consequence  of  the  seduction,  he  is  deprived  of  the  benefit  of 
her  labor :  or  where  the  seducer,  at  the  same  time,  is  a  trespasser  upon  the 
close  or  premises  of  the  parent.  But  when  by  such  forced  circumstances  the 
law  can  take  cognizance  of  the  offense,  juries  disregard  the  pretended  injury, 
and  give  damages  commensurate  to  the  wounded  feelings  of  the  parent. 

Female  virtue,  by  the  temporal  law,  is  perfectly  exposed  to  the  slanders  of 
malignity  and  falsehood ;  for  any  one  may  proclaim  in  conversation,  that  the 
purest  maid,  or  the  chastest  matron,  is  the  most  meretricious  and  incontinent 
of  women,  with  impunity,  or  free  from  the  animadversions  of  the  temporal 
courts.  Thus  female  honor,  which  is  dearer  to  the  sex  than  their  lives,  is  left 
by  the  common  law  to  be  the  sport  of  an  abandoned  calumniator. 

From  this  impartial  statement  of  the  account,  I  fear  there  is  little  reason  to 
pay  a  compliment  to  our  laws  for  their  respect  and  favor  to  the  female  sex. 

45.    SUFFRAGE   FOR  WOMEN1 

I  rise,  sir,  to  propose  an  extension  of  the  suffrage  which  can 
excite  no  party  or  class  feeling  in  the  house  —  which  can  give  no 
umbrage  to  the  keenest  assertor  of  the  claims  either  of  property 
or  of  numbers  ;  an  extension  which  has  not  the  faintest  tendency 

1  Speech  by  John  Stuart  Mill,  in  the  British  Parliament,  May  20,  1867.  Re- 
printed by  the  College  Equal  Suffrage  League. 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     453 

to  disturb,  what  we  have  heard  so  much  about  lately,  the  balance 
of  political  power ;  which  cannot  afflict  the  most  timid  alarmist 
by  any  revolutionary  terrors,  or  offend  the  most  jealous  democrat 
as  an  infringement  of  popular  rights,  or  a  privilege  granted  to 
one  class  of  society  at  the  expense  of  another.  There  is  nothing 
to  distract  our  minds  from  the  simple  consideration  whether  there 
is  any  reasonable  ground  for  excluding  an  entire  half  of  the 
nation,  not  only  from  actual  admission,  but  from  the  very  possi- 
bility of  being  admitted  within  the  pale  of  citizenship,  though 
they  may  fulfill  every  one  of  the  conditions  legally  and  constitu- 
tionally sufficient  in  all  cases  but  theirs.  This  is,  under  the  laws 
of  our  country,  a  solitary  case.  There  is  no  other  example  of  an 
exclusion  which  is  absolute.  If  it  were  the  law  that  none  should 
have  a  vote  but  the  possessors  of  ,£5,000  a  year,  the  poorest  man 
in  the  community  might,  and  now  and  then  would,  attain  to  the 
privilege.  But  neither  birth,  nor  merit,  nor  exertion,  nor  intellect, 
nor  fortune,  nor  even  that  great  disposer  of  human  affairs  —  acci- 
dent, can  enable  any  woman  to  have  her  voice  counted  in  those 
common  concerns  which  touch  her  and  hers  as  nearly  as  any  other 
person  in  the  nation. 

Now,  sir,  before  going  any  farther,  permit  me  to  say  that  a 
prima  facie  case  is  already  made  out.  It  is  not  just  to  make  dis- 
tinctions, in  rights  and  privileges,  between  one  of  Her  Majesty's 
subjects  and  another,  unless  for  a  positive  reason.  I  do  not  mean 
that  the  suffrage,  or  any  other  political  function,  is  an  abstract 
right,  or  that  to  withhold  it  from  anyone,  on  sufficient  grounds 
of  expediency,  is  a  personal  wrong ;  it  is  an  utter  misunderstand- 
ing of  the  principle  I  maintain  to  confound  this  with  it ;  my 
whole  argument  is  one  of  expediency.  But  all  expediencies  are 
not  on  exactly  the  same  level.  There  is  a  kind  of  expediency 
which  is  called  justice ;  and  justice,  though  it  does  not  necessarily 
demand  that  we  should  bestow  political  rights  on  everyone,  does 
demand  that  we  should  not  capriciously  and  without  cause  give 
those  rights  to  one,  and  withhold  them  from  another.  ...  To  lay 
a  ground  for  the  denial  of  the  franchise  to  anyone,  it  is  necessary 
to  allege  either  personal  unfitness  or  public  danger.  Can  either 
of  these  be  asserted  in  the  present  case  ?  Can  it  be  pretended 


454  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

that  women  who  manage  a  property  or  conduct  a  business,  who 
pay  rates  and  taxes,  often  to  a  large  amount,  and  often  from  their 
own  earnings,  many  of  whom  are  responsible  heads  of  families, 
and  some  of  whom,  in  the  capacity  of  schoolmistresses,  teach 
more  than  a  great  many  of  the  male  electors  have  ever  learned 
are  not  capable  of  a  function  of  which  every  male  householder  is 
capable  ?  Or  is  it  supposed  that,  if  they  were  allowed  to  vote, 
they  would  revolutionize  the  State,  subvert  any  of  our  valuable 
institutions,  or  that  we  should  have  worse  laws,  or  be,  in  any 
single  respect,  worse  governed  by  means  of  their  suffrage  ? 

No  one  thinks  anything  of  the  kind ;  and  it  is  not  only  the 
general  principles  of -justice  that  are  infringed,  or  at  any  rate  set 
aside  by  excluding  women,  merely  as  women,  from  the  election 
of  representatives.  That  exclusion  is  repugnant  to  the  particular 
principles  of  the  British  Constitution.  It  violates  the  oldest  of 
our  constitutional  axioms  —  a  principle  dear  to  all  reformers,  and 
theoretically  acknowledged  by  conservatives  —  that  taxation  and 
representation  should  be  coextensive  ;  that  the  taxes  should  be 
voted  by  those  who  pay  them.  Do  not  women  pay  taxes  ?  Does 
not  every  woman  who  is  sui  juris  pay  exactly  the  same  as  a  man 
who  has  the  same  electoral  qualifications  ?  If  having  a  stake  in 
the  country  means  anything,  the  owner  of  freehold  or  leasehold 
property  has  the  same  stake,  whether  it  is  owned  by  a  man  or  a 
woman. 

There  is  evidence  in  our  constitutional  records  that  women 
have  voted  in  counties  and  in  some  boroughs  at  former,  though 
certainly  distant,  periods  of  history.  But  the  house  will  expect 
that  I  should  not  rest  my  case  on  general  principles,  either  of 
justice  or  of  the  Constitution,  but  should  produce  what  are  called 
practical  arguments.  Now  I  frankly  admit  that  one  very  serious 
practical  argument  is  entirely  wanting  in  the  case  of  women  :  they 
do  not  hold  great  meetings  in  Hyde  Park  nor  demonstrations  at 
Islington. 

How  far  this  omission  may  be  considered  to  invalidate  their 

claims,  I  will  not  pretend  to  say.    But  other  practical  arguments 

—  practical  even  in  the  most  restricted  sense  of  the  term  —  are 

not  wanting ;  and  I  am  ready  to  state  them  if  I   may  first  be 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     455 

allowed  to  ask,  Where  are  the  practical  objections  ?  In  general, 
the  difficulty  which  people  feel  on  this  subject  is  not  a  practical 
objection ;  there  is  nothing  practical  in  it ;  it  is  a  mere  feeling  — 
a  feeling  of  strangeness.  The  idea  is  so  very  new ;  at  least  they 
think  so,  though  that  is  a  mistake  :  it  is  a  very  old  idea.  Well, 
strangeness  is  a  thing  which  wears  off.  Some  things  were  strange 
enough  to  many  of  us  three  months  ago  which  are  not  at  all  so 
now ;  and  many  which  are  strange  now  will  not  be  strange  to  the 
same  person  a  few  years  hence,  not  to  say  a  few  months ;  and, 
as  for  novelty,  we  live  in  a  world  of  novelties. 

The  despotism  of  custom  is  on  the  wane :  we  are  not  now  con- 
tent to  know  that  things  are  :  we  ask  whether  they  ought  to  be ; 
and  in  this  house,  I  am  bound  to  suppose  that  an  appeal  lies 
from  custom  to  a  higher  tribunal,  in  which  reason  is  judge.  Now, 
the  reasons  which  custom  is  in  the  habit  of  giving  for  itself  on 
this  subject  are  very  brief  :  that,  indeed  is  one  of  my  difficulties. 
It  is  not  easy  to  refute  an  interjection.  Interjections,  however, 
are  the  only  arguments  among  those  we  usually  hear  on  this  sub- 
ject which  it  appears  to  me  at  all  difficult  to  refute. 

The  others  chiefly  consist  of  such  aphorisms  as  these  :  Politics 
is  not  women's  business,  and  would  make  them  neglect  their 
proper  duties.  Women  do  not  desire  the  suffrage,  and  would 
rather  not  have  it.  Women  are  sufficiently  represented  through 
their  male  relatives.1  Women  have  power  enough  already.  I  shall 
perhaps  be  thought  to  have  done  enough  in  the  way  of  answer- 
ing, when  I  have  answered  all  these  :  it  may  perhaps  instigate 
any  honorable  gentleman  who  takes  the  trouble  of  replying  to  me, 
to  produce  something  more  recondite. 

Politics,  it  is  said,  is  not  a  woman's  business.  I  am  not  aware 
that  politics  is  a  man's  business  either,  unless  he  is  one  of  the 

1  It  is  of  interest  to  note,  in  this  connection,  that  John  Stuart  Mill's  father, 
James  Mill,  in  an  article  on  "Government"  in  an  early  edition  of  the  Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica,  took  this  position.  "  One  thing  is  pretty  clear,"  he  said,  "  that 
[in  considering  who  should  choose  representatives]  all  those  individuals  whose 
interests  are  indisputably  included  in  those  of  other  individuals  may  be  struck  off 
without  inconvenience.  In  this  light  may  be  viewed  all  children,  up  to  a  certain 
age,  whose  interests  are  involved  in  those  of  their  parents.  In  this  light,  also, 
women  may  be  regarded,  the  interest  of  almost  all  of  whom  is  involved  either  in 
that  of  their  fathers  or  that  of  their  husbands."  —  ED. 


456  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

few  who  is  paid  for  devoting  his  time  to  the  public  service,  or  is 
a  member  of  this  or  of  the  other  house.  The  great  majority  of 
male  visitors  have  their  own  business,  which  engrosses  nearly  the 
whole  of  their  time  ;  but  I  have  never  heard  that  the  hours  occu- 
pied in  attending,  once  in  a  few  years,  at  a  polling  booth,  even 
if  we  throw  in  the  time  spent  in  reading  newspapers  and  political 
treatises,  has  hitherto  made  them  neglect  their  shops  or  their 
counting-houses.  I  have  not  heard  that  those  who  have  votes  are 
worse  merchants,  or  worse  lawyers,  or  worse  physicians,  or  even 
worse  clergymen,  than  other  people.  One  would  think  that  the 
British  Constitution  allowed  no  man  to  vote  who  was  not  able  to 
give  up  the  greater  part  of  his  time  to  politics  ;  if  that  were  the 
case,  we  should  have  a  very  limited  constituency. 

But  let  me  ask,  what  is  the  meaning  of  political  freedom  ?  Is 
it  not  the  control  of  those  who  do  make  a  business  of  politics  by 
those  who  do  not  ?  It  is  the  very  principle  of  constitutional  liberty 
that  men  come  from  their  looms  and  their  forges  to  decide  — 
and  decide  well  —  whether  they  are  properly  governed,  and  whom 
they  will  be  governed  by ;  and  the  nations  who  prize  this  privi- 
lege, and  who  exercise  it  fully,  are  invariably  those  who  excel 
most  in  the  common  affairs  of  life. 

The  occupations  of  most  women  are,  and  are  likely  to  remain, 
principally  domestic ;  but  the  idea  that  those  occupations  are  in- 
compatible with  taking  an  interest  in  national  affairs,  or  in  any  of 
the  great  concerns  of  humanity,  is  as  futile  as  the  terror  once 
sincerely  entertained,  lest  artisans  should  desert  the  workshops 
and  the  factory  if  they  were  taught  to  read. 

I  know  there  is  an  obscure  feeling,  a  feeling  which  is  ashamed 
to  express  itself  openly,  that  women  have  no  right  to  care  about 
anything  but  how  they  may  be  the  most  useful  and  devoted  serv- 
ants of  some  man.  But  as  I  am  convinced  that  there  is  not 
one  member  of  this  house  whose  conscience  accuses  him  of  any 
such  mean  feeling,  I  may  say  that  the  claim  to  confiscate  the 
whole  existence  of  half  the  human  species  for  the  convenience 
of  the  other  half,  seems  to  me,  independently  of  its  injustice, 
particularly  silly.  For  who  that  has  had  ordinary  experience  of 
human  life,  and  ordinary  capacity  for  profiting  by  that  experience, 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     457 

fancies  that  those  do  their  own  business  best  who  understand 
nothing  else  ?  A  man  has  lived  to  little  purpose  who  has  not 
learned  that  without  general  mental  cultivation  no  particular  work 
that  requires  understanding  can  be  done  in  the  best  manner.  It 
requires  brains  to  use  practical  experience  ;  and  brains,  even  with- 
out practical  experience,  go  further  than  any  amount  of  practical 
experience  without  brains. 

But  perhaps  it  is  thought  that  the  ordinary  occupations  of 
women  are  more  antagonistic  than  men's  occupations  are  to  any 
comprehension  of  public  affairs.  Perhaps  it  is  thought  that  those 
who  are  principally  charged  with  the  moral  education  of  the 
future  generations  of  men  must  be  quite  unfit  to  judge  of  the 
moral  and  educational  interest  of  a  community ;  or  that  those 
whose  chief  daily  business  is  the  judicious  laying  out  of  money  so 
as  to  produce  the  greatest  results  with  the  smallest  means,  could 
not  give  any  lessons  to  right  honorable  gentlemen  on  that  side 
of  the  house,  or  on  this,  who  produce  such  singularly  small 
results  with  such  vast  means. 

I  feel  a  degree  of  confidence  on  this  subject,  which  I  could 
not  feel  if  the  political  change,  in  itself  not  a  great  or  formidable 
one,  for  which  I  contend,  were  not  grounded,  as  beneficent  and 
salutary  political  changes  usually  are,  upon  a  previous  social 
change.  The  idea  of  a  peremptory  and  absolute  line  of  separa- 
tion between  men's  province  of  thought  and  women's  —  the 
notion  of  forbidding  women  to  take  interest  in  what  interests  men 
—  belongs  to  a  gone-by  state  of  society  which  is  receding  farther 
and  farther  into  the  past.  We  think  and  talk  about  the  political 
revolutions  of  the  world,  but  we  do  not  pay  sufficient  attention  to 
the  fact  that  there  has  taken  place  among  us  a  silent  domestic 
revolution  :  women  and  men  are,  for  the  first  time  in  history, 
really  companions.  Our  traditions  about  the  proper  relations 
between  them  have  descended  to  us  from  a  time  when  their  lives 
were  apart  —  when  they  were  separate  in  their  thoughts  because 
they  were  separate  both  in  their  amusements  and  in  their  serious 
occupations.  The  man  spent  his  hours  of  leisure  among  men  : 
all  his  friendships,  all  his  real  intimacies  were  with  men  :  with 
men  alone  did  he  converse  on  any  serious  subject :  the  wife  was 


458  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

either  a  plaything  or  an  upper  servant.  All  this  among  the  edu- 
cated classes  is  changed  :  men  no  longer  give  up  their  spare  time 
to  violent  outdoor  exercise  and  boisterous  conviviality  with  male 
associates  :  the  home  has  acquired  the  ascendancy  :  the  two  sexes 
now  really  pass  their  lives  together :  the  women  of  the  family  are 
the  man's  habitual  society :  the  wife  is  his  chief  associate,  his 
most  confidential  friend,  and  often  his  most  trusted  counselor. 

Now,  does  any  man  wish  to  have  for  his  nearest  companion, 
linked  so  closely  with  himself,  and  whose  wishes  and  preferences 
have  so  strong  a  claim  upon  him,  one  whose  thoughts  are  alien  from 
those  which  occupy  his  own  mind  —  one  who  can  give  neither 
help  nor  comfort  nor  support  to  his  noblest  feelings  and  pur- 
poses ?  Is  this  close  and  almost  exclusive  companionship  com- 
patible with  women  being  warned  off  all  large  subjects  —  taught 
that  they  ought  not  to  care  about  what  it  is  man's  duty  to  care 
for,  and  that  to  take  part  in  any  serious  interests  outside  the 
household  is  stepping  beyond  their  province  ?  Is  it  good  for  a 
man  to  pass  his  life  in  close  communion  of  thought  and  feeling 
with  a  person  studiously  kept  inferior  to  himself,  whose  earthly 
interests  are  forcibly  confined  within  four  walls,  who  is  taught  to 
cultivate  as  a  grace  of  character  ignorance  and  indifference  about 
the  most  inspiring  subjects,  those  among  which  his  highest  duties 
are  cast  ?  Does  anyone  suppose  that  this  can  happen  without 
detriment  to  the  man's  own  character  ? 

The  time  has  come  when,  if  women  are  not  raised  to  the  level 
of  men,  men  will  be  pulled  down  to  theirs.  The  women  of  a 
man's  family  are  either  a  stimulus  and  a  support  to  his  higher 
aspirations,  or  a  drag  upon  them.  You  may  keep  them  ignorant 
of  politics,  but  you  cannot  keep  them  from  concerning  them- 
selves with  the  least  respectable  part  of  politics  —  its  personalities. 
If  they  do  not  understand,  and  cannot  enter  into  the  man's  feel- 
ings of  public  duty,  they  do  care  about  his  private  interests,  and 
that  is  the  scale  into  which  their  weight  is  certain  to  be  thrown. 
They  are  an  influence  always  at  hand,  cooperating  with  his  selfish 
promptings,  watching  and  taking  advantage  of  every  moment  of 
moral  irresolution,  and  doubling  the  strength  of  every  temptation. 
Even  if  thev  maintain  a  modest  neutrality,  their  mere  absence  of 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     459 

sympathy  hangs  a  dead  weight  upon  his  moral  energies,  and  makes 
him  averse  to  incur  sacrifices  which  they  will  feel,  and  to  forego 
worldly  successes  and  advantages  in  which  they  would  share,  for 
the  sake  of  objects  which  they  cannot  appreciate.  But  suppose 
him  to  be  happily  preserved  from  temptation  to  an  actual  sacrifice 
of  conscience,  the  insensible  influence  on  the  higher  parts  of  his 
own  nature  is  still  deplorable.  Under  an  idle  notion  that  the 
beauties  of  character  of  the  two  sexes  are  mutually  incompatible, 
men  are  afraid  of  manly  women  ;  but  those  who  have  reflected  on 
the  nature  and  power  of  social  influences,  know  that,  when  there 
are  not  manly  women,  there  will  not  much  longer  be  manly  men. 
When  men  and  women  are  really  companions,  if  women  are  frivo- 
lous, men  will  be  frivolous ;  if  women  care  only  for  personal 
interests  and  trifling  amusements,  men  in  general  will  care  for 
little  else.  The  two  sexes  must  now  rise  or  sink  together. 

It  may  be  said  that  women  can  take  interest  in  great  national 
questions  without  having  a  vote.  They  can,  certainly  ;  but  how 
many  of  them  will  ?  All  that  society  and  education  can  do  is 
exhausted  in  inculcating  on  women  that  the  rule  of  their  conduct 
ought  to  be  what  society  expects  from  them,  and  the  denial  of  the 
vote  is  a  proclamation,  intelligible  to  everyone,  that  society  does 
not  expect  them  to  concern  themselves  with  public  interests. 
Why,  the  whole  of  a  girl's  thoughts  and  feelings  are  toned  down 
by  it  from  her  earliest  school  days  ;  she  does  not  take  the  inter- 
est, even  in  national  history,  that  a  boy  does,  because  it  is  to  be 
no  business  of  hers  when  she  grows  up.  If  there  are  women,  and 
fortunately  there  now  are,  who  do  care  about  these  subjects,  and 
study  them,  it  is  because  the  force  within  is  powerful  enough  to 
bear  up  against  the  worst  kind  of  discouragement,  that  which  acts 
not  by  interposing  obstacles  which  may  be  struggled  against,  but 
by  deadening  the  spirit  which  faces  and  conquers  obstacles. 

We  are  told  that  women  do  not  wish  the  suffrage.  If  this  be 
so,  it  only  proves  that  nearly  all  women  are  still  under  this  dead- 
ening influence,  that  the  opiate  still  benumbs  their  mind  and  con- 
science. But  there  are  many  women  who  do  desire  the  suffrage, 
and  have  claimed  it  by  petitions  to  this  house.  How  do  we  know 
how  many  more  thousands  there  are  who  have  not  asked  for  what 


460  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

they  do  not  hope  to  get,  either  for  fear  of  being  ill  thought  of  by 
men  or  by  other  women,  or  from  the  feeling  so  sedulously  culti- 
vated by  the  whole  of  their  education  —  aversion  to  make  them- 
selves conspicuous  ? 

Men  must  have  a  great  faculty  of  self-delusion  if  they  suppose 
that  leading  questions  put  to  the  ladies  of  their  families,  or  of 
their  acquaintances,  will  elicit  their  real  sentiments,  or  will  be 
answered  with  entire  sincerity  by  one  woman  in  ten  thousand. 
No  one  is  so  well  schooled  as  most  women  are  in  making  a  virtue 
of  necessity.  It  costs  little  to  disclaim  caring  for  what  is  not 
offered  ;  and  frankness  in  expressing  feelings  that  may  be  dis- 
agreeable or  unflattering  to  their  nearest  connections  is  not  one 
of  the  virtues  which  a  woman's  education  tends  to  cultivate.  It 
is,  moreover,  a  virtue  attended  with  sufficient  risk  to  induce  pru- 
dent women  to  reserve  its  exercise  for  cases  in  which  there  is 
some  nearer  interest  to  be  promoted  by  it. 

At  all  events,  those  who  do  not  care  for  the  suffrage  will  not 
use  it.  Either  they  will  not  register,  or  if  they  do,  they  will  vote 
as  their  male  relatives  advise  them,  by  which,  as  the  advantage 
would  probably  be  about  equally  shared  among  all  classes,  no 
harm  would  be  done.  Those,  whether  they  be  few  or  many,  who 
do  value  the  privilege,  would  exercise  it,  and  would  experience 
that  stimulus  to  their  faculties,  and  that  widening  and  liberalizing 
influence  on  their  feelings  and  sympathies,  which  the  suffrage 
seldom  fails  to  exert  over  every  class  that  is  admitted  to  a  share 
in  it.  Meanwhile,  an  unworthy  stigma  would  have  been  taken  off 
the  whole  sex,  the  law  would  have  ceased  to  stamp  them  as  inca- 
pable of  serious  things,  would  have  ceased  to  proclaim  that  their 
opinions  and  wishes  do  not  deserve  to  have  any  influence  in 
things  which  concern  them  equally  with  men,  and  in  many  that 
concern  them  much  more  than  men.  They  would  no  longer  be 
classed  with  children,  idiots,  and  lunatics  as  incapable  t>f  taking 
care  either  of  themselves  or  others,  and  needing  that  everything 
should  be  done  for  them  without  asking  for  their  consent.  If  no 
more  than  one  woman  in  twenty  thousand  used  the  vote,  it  would 
be  a  gain  to  all  women  to  be  declared  capable  of  using  it.  Even 
so  purely  theoretical  an  enfranchisement  would  remove  an  artificial 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     461 

weight  from  the  expansion  of  their  faculties,  the  real  evil  of  which 
is  far  greater  than  the  apparent. 

Then  it  is  said  that  women  do  not  need  direct  political  power 
because  they  have  so  much  indirect  through  the  influence  they 
possess  over  their  male  relatives  and  connections.  I  should  like 
to  try  this  argument  in  other  cases.  Rich  people  have  a  great 
deal  of  indirect  influence.  Is  this  a  reason  for  denying  them 
a  vote  ?  Did  anyone  ever  propose  a  rating  qualification  the 
wrong  way,  and  bring  in  a  reform  bill  to  disfranchise  everybody 
who  lives  in  a  ,£500  house,  or  pays  ,£100  a  year  in  direct 
taxes?  Unless  this  rule  for  distributing  the  franchise  is  to  be 
reserved  for  the  exclusive  benefit  of  women,  the  legitimate  con- 
sequences of  it  would  be  that  persons  above  a  certain  amount 
of  fortune  should  be  allowed  to  bribe,  but  should  not  be  allowed 
to  vote. 

It  is  true  that  women  have  already  great  power.  It  is  part 
of  my  case  that  they  have  great  power.  But  they  have  it  under 
the  worst  possible  conditions,  because  it  is  indirect,  and,  there- 
fore, irresponsible.  I  want  to  make  that  power  a  responsible 
power.  I  want  to  make  the  woman  feel  her  conscience  interested 
in  its  honest  exercise.  I  want  to  make  her  feel  that  it  is  not 
given  to  her  as  a  mere  means  of  personal  ascendancy.  I  want  to 
make  her  influence  work  by  a  manly  interchange  of  opinions,  and 
not  by  cajolery.  I  want  to  awaken  in  her  the  political  point  of 
honor.  At  present  many  a  woman  greatly  influences  the  political 
conduct  of  her  male  connections,  sometimes  by  force  of  will 
actually  governs  it ;  but  she  is  never  supposed  to  have  anything 
to  do  with  it.  The  man  she  influences,  and  perhaps  misleads,  is 
alone  responsible.  Her  power  is  like  the  backstairs  influence  of 
a  favorite.  The  poor  creature  is  nobody,  and  all  is  referred  to  the 
man's  superior  wisdom  ;  and  as,  of  course,  he  will  not  give  way 
to  her  if  he  ought  not,  she  may  work  upon  him  through  all  his 
strongest  feelings  without  incurring  any  responsibility.  I  demand 
that  all  who  exercise  power  should  have  the  burden  laid  upon 
them  of  knowing  something  about  the  things  they  have  power 
over.  With  the  admitted  right  to  a  voice  would  come  a  sense 
of  the  corresponding  duty. 


462  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

A  woman  is  not  generally  inferior  in  tenderness  of  conscience 
to  a  man.  Make  her  a  moral  agent  in  matters  of  public  conduct. 
Show  that  you  require  from  her  a  political  conscience,  and  when 
she  has  learned  to  understand  the  transcendent  importance  of 
these  things,  she  will  see  why  it  is  wrong  to  sacrifice  political  con- 
victions for  personal  interest  and  vanity ;  she  will  understand  that 
political  honesty  is  not  a  foolish  personal  crotchet,  which  a  man 
is  bound  for  the  sake  of  his  family  to  give  up,  but  a  serious 
duty ;  and  the  men  whom  she  can  influence  will  be  better  men 
in  all  public  relations,  and  not,  as  they  often  are  at  present,  worse 
men  by  the  whole  effect  of  her  influence. 

But,  at  all  events,  it  will  be  said  women,  as  women,  do  not 
suffer  any  practical  inconvenience  by  not  being  represented.  The 
interests  of  all  women  are  safe  in  the  hands  of  their  fathers, 
husbands,  and  brothers,  whose  interest  is  the  same  with  theirs, 
and  who,  besides  knowing  better  than  they  do  what  is  good  for 
them,  care  a  good  deal  more  for  them  than  they  care  for 
themselves. 

This  is  exactly  what  has  been  said  of  all  other  unrepresented 
classes  —  the  operatives,  for  instance  ;  are  they  not  all  virtually 
represented  through  their  employers  ?  are  not  the  interests  of 
the  employer  and  that  of  the  employed,  when  properly  under- 
stood, the  same  ?  To  insinuate  the  contrary,  is  it  not  the  horrible 
crime  of  setting  class  against  class  ?  Is  not  the  farmer  interested 
along  with  his  laborer  in  the  prosperity  of  agriculture  ?  Has  not 
the  cotton  manufacturer  as  great  an  interest  in  the  high  price  of 
calicoes  as  his  workmen  ?  Is  not  the  employer  interested  as  well 
as  his  men  in  the  repeal  of  taxes  ?  Have  not  employer  and 
employed  a  common  interest  against  outsiders,  just  as  man  and 
wife  have  against  all  outside  the  family  ?  And  are  not  all  em- 
ployers kind,  benevolent,  charitable  men,  who  love  their  work- 
people, and  always  know  and  do  what  is  most  for  their  good  ? 
Every  one  of  these  assertions  is  exactly  as  true  as  the  parallel 
assertion  repecting  men  and  women.  We  are  not  living  in 
Arcadia,  but,  as  we  were  lately  reminded,  in  fcecc  Romuli ;  and 
in  that  region  workmen  need  other  protection  than  that  of  their 
masters,  and  women  than  that  of  their  men. 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     463 

I  should  like  to  see  a  return  laid  before  the  house  of  the  number 
of  women  who  are  annually  beaten  to  death,  kicked  to  death,  or 
trodden  to  death,  by  their  male  protectors.  I  should  like  this 
document  to  contain,  in  an  opposite  column,  a  return  of  the  sen- 
tences passed  in  those  cases  in  which  the  dastardly  criminal  did 
not  get  off  altogether ;  and  in  a  third  column  a  comparative  view 
of  the  amount  of  property,  the  unlawful  taking  of  which  had,  in 
the  same  sessions  or  assizes,  by  the  same  judge,  been  thought 
worthy  of  the  same  degree  of  punishment.  We  should  thus  ob- 
tain an  arithmetical  estimate  of  the  value  set  by  a  male  legisla- 
ture and  male  tribunals  upon  the  murder  of  a  woman  by  habitual 
torture,  often  prolonged  for  years,  which,  if  there  be  any  shame 
in  us,  would  make  us  hang  our  heads. 

Before  it  is  contended  that  women  do  not  suffer  in  their  in- 
terests, especially  as  women,  by  not  being  represented,  it  must 
be  considered  whether  women,  as  women,  have  no  grievances  — 
whether  the  law,  and  those  practices  which  law  can  reach,  treat 
women  in  every  respect  as  favorably  as  men.  Well,  sir,  is  that 
the  case  ?  As  to  education,  for  example,  we  continually  hear  it 
said  that  the  education  of  the  mothers  is  the  most  important  part 
of  the  education  of  the  country,  because  they  educate  the  men. 
Is  as  much  importance  really  attached  to  it  ?  Are  there  many 
fathers  who  care  as  much,  or  are  willing  to  expend  as  much,  for 
the  good  education  of  their  daughters  as  of  their  sons  ?  Where 
are  the  universities,  where  the  public  schools,  where  the  schools 
of  any  high  description  for  them  ? 

If  it  is  said  that  girls  are  best  educated  at  home,  where  are 
the  training  schools  for  governesses  ?  What  has  become  of  the 
endowments  which  the  bounty  of  our  forefathers  established  for 
the  instruction,  not  of  boys  alone,  but  of  boys  and  girls  indis- 
criminately ?  I  am  informed  by  one  of  the  highest  authorities 
on  the  subject  that,  in  the  majority  of  the  deeds  of  endowment, 
the  provision  was  for  education  generally,  and  not  especially  for 
boys.  One  great  endowment — Christ's  Hospital- — was  desig- 
nated expressly  for  both.  That  establishment  maintains  and  edu- 
cates one  thousand  one  hundred  boys,  and  exactly  twenty-six  girls. 

Then  when  they  have  attained  womanhood,  how  does  it  fare 


464  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

with  the  large  and  increasing  portion  of  the  sex,  who,  though 
sprung  from  the  educated  classes,  have  not  inherited  a  provision  ; 
and,  not  having  obtained  one  by  marriage,  or  disdaining  to  marry 
merely  for  a  provision,  depend  on  their  exertions  for  support  ? 
Hardly  any  decent  educated  occupation,  save  one,  is  open  to  them. 
They  are  either  governesses,  or  nothing. 

A  fact  has  quite  recently  occurred  which  is  worth  commem- 
orating. A  young  lady,  Miss  Garrett,  from  no  pressure  of  neces- 
sity, but  from  an  honorable  desire  to  find  scope  for  her  activity 
in  alleviating  the  sufferings  of  her  fellow  creatures,  applied  her- 
self to  the  study  of  medicine.  Having  duly  qualified  herself,  she, 
with  an  energy  and  perseverance  which  cannot  be  too  highly 
praised,  knocked  successively  at  every  one  of  the  doors  through 
which,  in  this  country,  a  student  can  pass  into  medical  practice. 
Having  found  every  other  door  fast  shut,  she  at  last  discovered 
one  which  had  been  accidentally  left  ajar.  The  Society  of  Apoth- 
ecaries, it  appears,  had  forgotten  to  shut  out  those  whom  they 
never  thought  would  attempt  to  come  in  ;  and  through  that  narrow 
entry  this  young  lady  obtained  admission  into  the  medical  profes- 
sion. But  so  objectionable  did  it  appear  to  this  learned  body  that 
women  should  be  permitted  to  be  the  medical  attendants,  even 
of  women,  that  the  narrow  wicket  which  Miss  Garrett  found  open 
has  been  closed  after  her,  and  no  second  Miss  Garrett  is  to  be 
suffered  to  pass  through  it. 

This  is  instar  omnium.  As  soon  as  ever  women  become  cap- 
able of  successfully  competing  with  men  in  any  career,  if  it  be 
lucrative  and  honorable,  it  is  closed  to  them.  A  short  time  ago 
women  could  be  associates  of  the  Royal  Academy ;  but  they  were 
so  distinguishing  themselves,  they  were  taking  so  honorable  a 
rank  in  their  art,  that  this  privilege,  too,  has  been  taken  from 
them.  That  is  the  kind  of  care  taken  of  women  by  the  men 
who  so  faithfully  represent  them.  That  is  our  treatment  of  un- 
married women  ;  and  now  about  the  married. 

They,  it  may  be  said,  are  not  directly  concerned  in  the  amend- 
ment which  I  have  moved,  but  it  concerns  many  who  have  been 
married  as  well  as  others  who  will  be  so.  By  the  common  law 
of  England,  everything  that  a  woman  has  belongs  absolutely  to 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     465 

her  husband ;  he  may  tear  it  all  away  from  her,  may  spend  the 
last  penny  of  it  in  debauchery,  leaving  her  to  maintain  by  her 
labor  both  herself  and  her  children  ;  and  if,  by  heroic  exertion, 
she  earns  enough  to  put  by  anything  for  their  future  support, 
unless  she  is  judicially  separated  from  him,  he  can  pounce  upon 
her  savings,  and  leave  her  penniless  ;  and  such  cases  are  of  very 
common  occurrence.  If  we  were  besotted  enough  to  think  such 
things  right,  there  would  be  more  excuse  for  u?  ;  but  we  know 
better.  The  richer  classes  have  found  a  way  of  exempting  their 
own  daughters  from  this  iniquitous  state  of  the  law.  By  the  con- 
trivance of  marriage  settlements,  they  can  make  in  each  case  a 
private  law  for  themselves,  and  they  always  do.  Why  do  we  not 
provide  that  justice  for  the  daughters  of  the  poor  which  we  take 
good  care  shall  be  done  to  our  own  daughters  ?  Why  is  not  what 
is  done  in  every  particular  case  that  we  personally  care  for  made 
the  general  law  of  the  land?  —  that  a  poor  man's  child,  whose 
parents  could  not  afford  the  expense  of  a  settlement,  may  be  able 
to  retain  any  little  property  which  may  devolve  on  her,  and  may 
have  a  voice  in  the  disposal  of  her  own  earnings,  often  the  best 
and  only  reliable  part  of  the  sustenance  of  the  family  ?  I  am 
sometimes  asked  what  practical  grievance  I  propose  to  remedy 
by  enabling  women  to  vote.  I  propose,  for  one  thing,  to  remedy 
this.  I  have  given  these  few  instances  to  prove  that  women  are 
not  the  petted  favorites  of  society  which  some  people  seem  to 
imagine  ;  that  they  have  not  that  abundance,  that  superfluity  of 
influence,  which  is  ascribed  to  them,  and  are  not  sufficiently  rep- 
resented by  the  representation  of  those  who  have  never  cared  to 
do  in  their  behalf  so  obvious  an  act  of  justice.  Grievances  of 
less  magnitude  than  the  laws  of  the  property  of  married  women, 
when  affecting  persons  and  classes  less  inured  to  passive  endur- 
ance, have  provoked  revolutions. 

\Ve  ought  not  to  take  advantage  of  the  security  which  we  feel 
against  any  such  danger  in  the  present  case  to  refuse  to  a  limited 
class  of  women  that  small  amount  of  participation  in  the  enact- 
ment and  the  improvement  of  our  laws  which  this  motion  solicits 
for  them,  and  which  would  enable  the  general  feelings  of  women 
to  be  heard  in  this  house  through  a  few  female  representatives. 


466  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

We  ought  not  to  deny  to  them  what  we  are  going  to  accord  to 
everybody  else :  a  right  to  be  consulted  ;  the  common  chance  of 
placing  in  the  great  council  of  the  nation  a  few  organs  of  their 
sentiments  ;  of  having  what  every  petty  trade  or  profession  has  — 
a  few  members  of  the  legislature,  with  a  special  call  to  stand  up 
for  their  interests,  and  direct  attention  to  the  mode  in  which  those 
interests  are  affected  by  the  law,  or  by  any  changes  in  it.  No 
more  is  asked  fjy  this  motion  ;  and  when  the  time  comes,  as  it 
is  certain  to  come,  when  this  will  be  conceded,  I  feel  the  firmest 
conviction  that  you  will  never  repent  of  the  concession.  I  move, 
that  the  word  "man"  be  omitted,  and  the  word  "person"  in- 
serted in  its  place. 

46.    IS  WOMAN   SUFFRAGE  IMPORTANT?1 

We  have  no  militant  suffrage  movement  in  this  country,  per- 
haps chiefly  because  there  is  nothing  to  militate  against.  There 
is  no  active  opposition.2  What  we  have  to  overcome  is  a  polite 
but  perfectly  useless  acquiescence.  What  we  have  to  prove  is  not 
that  woman  suffrage  is  right,  but  that  it  is  important.  In  my 
opinion  it  has  an  importance  too  far-reaching  for  the  grasp  of 
persons  immersed  in  politics  or  business,  and  I  shall  try  to  set 
forth,  in  a  brevity  suitable  to  their  leisure  rather  than  to  the  sub- 
ject, the  nature  of  that  importance.  In  so  doing  I  can  present 
no  new  "arguments,"  but  only  try  to  show  that  among  the  old, 
two  at  least  have  at  the  present  day  a  vital  thrust  in  them. 

To  clear  the  field  for  those  two,  let  me  say  at  the  start  that 
we  do  not  look  to  women's  votes  for  the  purification  and  moral 
elevation  of  the  body  politic.  That  is  a  lovely  hope,  transmitted 
to  us,  in  its  classic  form,  1  believe,  by  George  William  Curtis. 
"  I  am  asked,"  he  exclaims,  "would  you  drag  women  down  into 
the  mire  of  politics  ?  No,  sir,  I  would  have  them  lift  us  out  of  it." 

1  By  Max  Eastman.   Pamphlet  published  by  the  New  York  State  Men's  League 
for  Woman  Suffrage.    Revised  by  the  author. 

2  This  is  scarcely  true  at  present,  since  in  recent  campaigns  the  liquor  inter- 
ests are  known  to  have  given  large  sums  and  to  have  built  up  organizations  to 
defeat  equal  suffrage.    This  was  notably  true  in  Wisconsin  in  1912,  in  Ohio  in 
1912  and  1914.  and  in  New  York,  New  Jersey,  and  Pennsylvania  in  1915. —  Ki>. 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     467 

But  we  are  not  much  stirred  by  the  prophecy  of  such  miracles 
in  this  day.  We  are  more  scientific  than  to  judge  women  in  gen- 
eral by  the  one  we  have  in  our  romantic  eye.  We  look  round  in 
the  city  and  the  country,  and  we  see  who  the  men  are  and  who 
the  women  are,  and  we  conclude  that  neither  sex  has  an  exclusive 
monopoly  of  the  virtues. 

Indeed,  it  has  been  maintained  in  New  York  City,  by  persons 
with  an  eye  to  the  private  profits  of  politics,  that  woman  suffrage 
would  be  a  help  to  them  in  their  business.  Nor  is  it  possible  to 
deny  —  speaking  from  that  city  only  —  that  this  sudden  extension 
of  the  franchise  might  furnish  to  the  powers  of  corruption  a 
temporary  help.  That  is  because,  after  the  vote  is  granted  to 
them,  some  time  will  elapse  before  a  normal  proportion  of  women 
acquire  the  habit  of  voting ;  a  natural  inertia  will  have  to  be  over- 
come ;  and  the  powers  of  corruption  have  a  better-perfected  system 
for  overcoming  the  inertia  of  voters  upon  election  day  than  the 
powers  of  reform.  "The  children  of  darkness  are  wiser  in  their 
generation  than  the  children  of  light."  That  is  why  nobody  ever 
quite  succeeds  in  the  salvation  of  society. 

That  state  of  affairs,  however,  besides  being  local,  will  be  tem- 
porary. Nothing  will  call  out  the  votes  of  the  better  class  of 
wives  and  mothers  quicker  than  a  striking  ascendancy  of  the  cor- 
rupt powers.  And  when  an  equal  proportion  of  all  classes  of  the 
women's  votes  is  called  out  we  shall  find  our  educated  and  our 
American-born  vote  increased,  and  our  uneducated  and  foreign- 
born  vote  decreased,  in  the  final  proportion.1  Therefore,  while 
we  cannot  look  to  women's  votes  for  such  an  inundation  of  purity 
as  certain  chivalric  souls  would  love  to  think,  we  can  assure  our- 
selves that  they  will  not  do  any  permanent  appreciable  harm  to 
the  body-politic.  On  the  contrary,  they  will  increase  the  average 
intellectual  culture  and  acquaintance  with  American  institutions 
in  the  electorate. 

Moreover,  we  cannot  ignore  the  fact  that  women,  even  when 
their  opportunity  and  the  demands  we  make  of  them  are  as  great 

1  In  1900-1909  there  were  enrolled  in  the  high  schools  of  the  United  States 
475,761  girls  and  onl\y  365,^12  boys.  And  of  the  total  number  of  immigrants  to 
this  country  in  the  fiscal  year  1909,  519,969  were  males  and  only  231,817  females. 


468  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

as  they  should  be,  will  remain  in  certain  ways  normally  different 
from  men.  Women  are  mothers,  and  men  are  not.  When  all 
psychic  marvels  and  parlor  nonsense  are  laid  aside,  that  is  the 
scientist's  difference  between  men  and  women.  Women  inherit, 
with  instinctive  motherhood,  a  body  of  passionate  interests  that 
men  only  partially  share.  And  when  we  say  that  those  interests 
are  needed  in  government,  we  but  extend  to  the  State  as  a  whole 
a  generalization  already  applied  to  every  essential  part  of  it.  For 
we  freely  acknowledge,  in  the  daily  progress  of  our  lives,  that 
women's  vital  intuitive  judgments  tend  often  to  recall  us  from 
our  theoretical  and  commercial  vagaries  to  the  chief  business,  the 
conservation  of  human  resources.  An  extension  of  that  tendency 
into  the  sphere  of  politics  will  appear  less  incongruous  and  more 
advisable  with  every  year  that  the  profession  of  politics  continues 
to  improve  as  it  is  now  improving. 

Governments  are  more  and  more  approaching  the  real  concerns 
of  humanity.  All  those  moral  and  social  problems,  the  preserva- 
tion of  health  and  safety,  the  regulation  of  hours  and  conditions 
of  labor,  the  guidance  of  competition,  even  the  determination  of 
wages  and  the  cure  of  poverty  —  problems  that  used  to  be  handled 
by  a  few  supernormal  individuals  under  the  name  of  "charity" 
—  are  creeping  into  the  daily  business  of  bureaus  and  legislatures. 
And  this  civilizing  of  governments  is  a  process  which  we  must  fur- 
ther with  all  our  might,  in  order  that  ultimately  even  the  greatest 
questions  of  democratic  equality,  which  are  still  only  agitated  by 
a  handful  of  noteworthy  idealists,  may  become  the  substance  of 
party  platforms  and  the  fighting-ground  of  practical  politics. 

Perhaps  we  have  not  enough  experimental  evidence  for  a  con- 
clusion, but  we  have  the  opinions  of  hundreds  of  good  men  in 
those  States  and  nations  where  women  vote,  to  support  our  rea- 
sonable expectation  that  their  influence  will  favor  rather  than 
retard  this  process. 

Another  hope  we  may  cherish  of  the  political  effect,  not  of 
women's  votes,  but  of  the  fact  that  they  vote  :  The  sexes  are 
more  idealistic  in  what  they  do  together  than  in  what  they  do 
apart.  And  for  this  reason  the  coming  of  women  —  or  the  com- 
ing of  families  —  into  politics,  will  bring  a  certain  benefit  other 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     469 

than  what  you  might  estimate  by  counting  the  wise  or  virtuous 
women's  votes.  It  will  make  impossible,  for  instance,  that  state 
of  conscience  prevalent  among  male  politicians,  who  go  into  the 
service  of  the  State  with  the  happy  feeling  that  they  have  left  their 
virtues  at  home  in  the  safe-keeping  of  their  wives  and  daughters. 
Men  throw  the  innocence  of  their  women-folk  as  a  sop  to  God, 
and  go  about  the  devil's  business.  But  I  doubt  whether  God,  or 
anyone  else,  was  ever  satisfied  with  innocence  as  a  substitute  for 
virtue  active  in  the  world.  I  could  never  see  the  value  of  pre- 
served innocence.  It  is  possible  that  our  republic  will  be  damned 
to  moral  destruction,  men  and  women  together,  and  it  is  possible 
that  it  will  be  saved  to  great  usefulness,  but  certainly  if  it  is  saved, 
it  will  be  saved  not  because  of  the  number  of  cloistered  innocents 
it  contains  within  its  boundaries,  but  because  of  the  number  of 
effective  human  beings  who  save  it.  Any  measure,  therefore,  will 
do  well,  which  tends  to  reduce  the  number  of  those  persons  who 
think  that  an  ineffectual  wife  can  do  the  being  good  for  the  whole 
family. 

Especially  it  will  do  well  if  it  reduces  the  number  of  such  men 
in  public  affairs,  where  the  lack  of  those  high  standards  that  we 
set  for  ourselves  in  our  homes  is  lamentably  apparent.  "He  is 
such  a  good  man  in  his  family !  "  we  say  of  our  disgraced  repre- 
sentative. Perhaps  if  we  do  not  waste  our  time  trying  to  make 
him  good  outside  his  family,  but  allow  his  family  and  its  acquaint- 
ance with  him  to  extend  into  the  sphere  of  his  political  activity, 
he  will  be  good  there  too,  or  else  nowhere,  and  there  will  be  no 
doubt  about  it.  He  will  at  least  realize  the  importance  of  honor 
in  public  service,  and  no  longer  be  able  to  return  home  and  think 
he  is  better  than  his  acts. 

Such  probabilities,  however,  with  so  brief  experiments  to  test 
them,  do  not  give  political  equality  a  pressing  importance  to  the 
man  of  average  interest  in  experimental  progress.  In  consider- 
ing the  effect  of  women's  votes  upon  politics,  as  in  mentioning 
the  question  of  abstract  rights,  I  have  but  endeavored  to  clear  the 
way  for  the  arguments  that  are  most  vital. 

It  is  not  justice  as  a  theoretic  ideal,  nor  feminine  virtue  as 
a  cure  for  politics,  but  democratic  government  as  the  practical 


4/0  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

method  of  human  happiness  that  compels  our  minds.  The  Anglo- 
Saxon  race  has  progressed  so  far  as  it  has,  in  intellectual  and 
moral  and  material  culture,  largely  because  it  has  carried  forth 
the  great  venture  of  popular  government.  We  have  learned  to 
take  it  for  granted,  and  so  to  forget,  that  civil  liberty  is  the  foun- 
dation of  our  good  fortune,  but  we  ought  to  remind  ourselves  of 
it  every  morning.  We  ought  to  remind  ourselves  that  we  are  the 
van  of  a  great  exploit.  Had  we  been  alive  when  the  daring  plans 
were  laid,  we  should  remember.  The  greatest  hypothesis  in  the 
history  of  moral  and  political  science  was  set  up  in  this  laboratory, 
and  our  business  is  to  try  out  the  experiment  until  the  last  breath 
of  hope  is  gone. 

The  democratic  hypothesis  is  that  a  State  is  good,  not  when  it 
conforms  to  some  general  abstract  ideal  of  what  a  State  ought  to 
be  or  do,  as  the  Greeks  thought,  but  when  it  conforms  to  the 
interests  of  certain  particular  concrete  individuals  —  namely,  its 
citizens,  all  of  them  that  are  in  mental  and  moral  health  ;  and 
that  the  way  to  find  out  their  interests  is  not  to  sit  on  a  throne 
or  a  bench  and  think  about  it,  but  go  and  ask  them.  Now  to 
discriminate  against  an  approximate  half  of  the  citizens  —  just 
because  they  have,  as  we  say,  such  different  interests  from  the 
rest  —  is  to  betray  our  hypothesis  and  destroy  our  experiment  at 
its  crucial  point.  For  the  whole  point  of  it  was  that  we  would 
give  up  asking  an  expert  political  class  of  the  people  what  the 
State  ought  to  do,  and  go  down  and  ask  all  the  people,  expert  or 
not  and  political  or  not,  what  they  are  interested  in  having  it  do. 

Not  only  have  the  thinkers  of  the  world  waked  up  to  the  fact 
that  women  are  individuals  and  so  to  be  counted  under  this 
theory  of  government,  but  the  world  itself  has  so  changed  that 
the  practical  necessity  of  applying  the  theory  to  them  drives  itself 
home  to  us.  We  have  only  to  open  our  minds  to  the  facts.  With 
the  advance  of  industrial  art  the  work  of  women  has  gone  from 
the  house  to  the  factory  and  market.  Women  have  followed  it 
there,  and  there  they  must  do  it  until  this  civilization  perishes. 
In  1900,  approximately  one  woman  in  every  five  in  the  United 
States  was  engaged  in  gainful  employment,  and  the  number  was 
increasing.  Most  of  these  women  have  no  choice  as  to  whether 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     471 

they  will  work  or  not,  and  many  of  them  are  working  in  circum- 
stances corrupting  their  health  and  motherhood.  It  is,  therefore, 
a  vital  problem  for  the  future  of  our  race,  how  to  render  the  con- 
ditions of  industry  compatible  with  the  physical  and  moral  health 
of  women.  And  to  one  who  is  willing  to  know  a  little  about 
human  nature  and  the  deep  wisdom  of  representative  govern- 
ment, it  is  clear  that  the  only  first  step  in  solution  of  that  prob- 
lem is  to  give  to  the  women  themselves  the  dignity  and  defense 
of  political  recognition. 

Compared  to  the  variety  of  their  needs,  and  the  subtlety  of  the 
disadvantages  under  which  they  enter  a  competitive  system,  it  is 
a  small  thing  to  give  them.  But  it  is  the  first  and  manifest  thing. 
It  is  the  ancient  antidote  of  that  prejudice  which  everywhere 
opposes  them,  and  its  smallness  not  a  reason  for  withholding, 
but  for  bestowing  it.  Give  them  that  small  thing  for  which 
Anglo-Saxon  men  have  groveled  and  lied  and  slaughtered  and 
perished  for  a  thousand  years,  to  win  —  namely,  a  little  bit  of  the 
personal  sacredness  of  sovereigns  before  their  rulers  and  the  law. 
A  small  thing,  but  their  own,  —  and  an  indispensable  prerequisite 
and  guarantee  of  every  other  privilege  or  opportunity  you  may 
hope  to  confer  upon  them. 

Women  have  that  guarantee  in  a  male  democracy,  it  is  stated, 
through  their  husbands  and  fathers  who  represent  them.  And  to 
an  extent  the  statement  is  true.  To  an  extent  it  is  true,  even 
when  the  husbands  and  fathers  have  none  of  that  perfect  loyalty 
to  them  which  the  statement  assumes,  for  the  habit  of  mind  which 
democracy  engenders  in  its  officials  involuntarily  extends  to  their 
dealing  with  the  unenfranchised.  But  there  is  a  time  when  it  is 
not  true,  and  a  point  where  that  habit  of  mind  does  not  extend. 
And  it  is  a  crucial  point  for  them  —  when  as  a  class  they,  the 
unenfranchised  workers,  segregate  themselves  and  dare  to  stand 
alone  for  their  special  aims  in  a  labor  organization.  Then  they 
are  severed  in  our  mind,  as  they  are  in  fact,  from  any  voter  who 
might  represent  them  ;  and  then,  above  all,  they  need  standing 
in  the  political  system.  For  there  are  just  two  dependable  guar- 
antees of  the  effectiveness  of  an  organization  of  people  without 
wealth,  and  one  is  gunpowder  and  the  other  is  the  ballot. 


472  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

"  Why,  the  ballot  never  helped  the  working  classes !  "  we  hear 
it  exclaimed.  "Organization  is  the  sole  hope  of  labor!"  But 
such  ignorance  of  the  history  and  significance  of  popular  sover- 
eignty is  revealed  in  the  exclamation,  that  one  knows  not  with 
what  kind  of  kindergarten  instruction  to  begin  to  answer  it.  He 
has  read  nothing  or  he  has  read  in  vain  of  nineteenth-century 
democracy,  who  thinks  that  labor  organizations  of  males  could 
have  arrived  where  they  are,  in  the  respect  of  men  and  the  law, 
if  they  had  been  unable  to  compel  consideration  from  the  State. 
It  is  because  organization  is  the  sole  hope  of  labor  that  labor 
must  have  its  portion  of  the  sovereignty.  And  it  is  because, 
when  united  together  for  their  special  purposes,  women  lose  even 
that  second-hand  sovereignty  they  are  elsewhere  alleged  to  have, 
that  they  must  have  a  first-hand  sovereignty.  They  must  have  a 
genuine  guarantee  that  their  needs  shall  be  of  consequence  to 
the  community  they  serve.  Such  certified  consideration  from  the 
powers  of  law  is  both  a  symbol  and  a  force  indispensable  to  any 
group,  or  person,  that  either  desires,  or  is  compelled  by  fortune, 
to  enter  the  competitive  world. 

A  hearing  was  recently  held  at  Albany  upon  a  bill  to  limit  the 
hours  of  women's  labor.  Twelve  big  employers  appeared  against 
the  bill,  stating  that  the  working  women  do  not  want  it.  Five 
elected  delegates  from  the  working- women's  organizations  ap- 
peared in  favor  of  the  bill,  stating  that  they  do  want  it.  No 
woman  appeared  against  the  bill.  That  was  a  drawn  conflict  of 
two  vital  interests  in  the  State.  The  stronger  and  wealthier  and 
better  organized  of  those  interests  we  clothe  with  the  whole  power 
and  prestige  of  political  citizenship,  and  the  knowledge  of  political 
methods.  The  weaker  and  poorer  and  less  organized  we  leave 
with  no  power  and  no  standing  in  the  community,  and  no  political 
experience  whatever.  We  let  those  employers  come  down  to  the 
Capitol  and  demand  what  they  want  from  their  representatives, 
and  we  make  those  workers  come  up  and  beg  what  they  want  from 
somebody  else's  representatives.  The  idea  of  such  a  hearing  upon 
such  a  bill  ought  to  disgust  every  clear-minded  American  with  this 
old-fashioned  masculine  pretense  at  representative  government. 

Such  is  the  argument  from  the  ideal  of  democracy,  theoretic, 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     473 

practical,  and  coercive  in  the  concrete  present.  Yet,  in  so  far 
as  we  are  moral,  in  so  far  as  we  are  believers  in  the  progressive 
enrichment  of  life,  we  have  something  more  to  do  than  live  up 
to  our  ideals.  We  have  to  illumine  and  improve  them  continually. 
The  Athenian  youths  had  a  running-match  in  which  they  carried 
torches,  and  it  was  no  victory  to  cross  the  tape  with  your  torch 
gone  out.  Such  is  the  race  that  is  set  before  us.  And  we  may 
well  remember  —  we  in  America  who  scorn  the  contemplative 
life  —  that  no  amount  of  strenuousness  with  the  legs  will  keep  a 
flame  burning  while  you  run.  You  will  have  to  be  thinking. 

And  it  is  out  of  a  thoughtful  endeavor,  not  merely  to  live  up 
to  an  ideal  of  ours,  but  to  develop  it  greatly,  that  the  suffrage 
movement  derives  its  chief  force.  I  mean  our  ideal  of  woman- 
hood. It  is  not  expected  by  the  best  advocates  of  this  change 
that  women  will  reform  politics  or  purge  society  of  evil,  but  it  is 
expected,  with  reasoned  and  already  proved  certainty,  that  polit- 
ical knowledge  and  experience  will  benefit  women.  Political 
responsibility,  the  character  it  demands  and  the  recognition  it 
receives,  will  alter  the  nature  and  function  of  women  in  society 
to  the  improvement  of  themselves  and  their  husbands  and  their 
children  and  their  homes.  Upon  that  ground  we  can  declare  that 
it  is  of  vital  importance  to  the  advance  of  civilized  life,  not  only 
to  give  the  ballot  to  those  women  who  want  it,  but  to  rouse  those 
women  who  do  not  know  enough  to  want  it,  to  a  better  appre- 
ciation of  the  great  age  in  which  they  live. 

The  Industrial  Era  —  for  all  the  ill  we  say  of  it,  we  must  say 
this  great  good,  that  it  has  made  possible  and  inevitable  the 
physical  and  social  and  moral  and  intellectual  liberation  of  women. 
The  simplification  of  home  life  through  invention  and  manufac- 
ture, the  growth  of  large  cities  with  their  popular  education,  and 
above  all  the  division  of  labor,  have  given  her  a  free  place  in  the 
active  world.  This  fact  is  the  distinctive  feature  of  these  ages. 
To  a  distant  and  universal  historian  • —  a  historian  who  writes  the 
lives  of  the  people  —  I  believe  that  this  change  in  the  position 
of  women  will  appear  not  only  the  most  striking,  but  the  most 
excellent  achievement  of  ours.  For  we  could  never  evolve  a 
heroic  race  of  people  on  the  earth  until  we  gave  them  a  twofold 


474  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

inheritance  and  tradition  of  active,  intelligent  virtue.  That  we  have 
begun  to  do.  And  no  act  of  ours  at  the  present  time  can  more 
urge  and  certify  this  great  step  in  the  history  of  life  than  to  give 
it  a  political  expression  and  guarantee.  Citizenship  will  rouse  and 
educate  women,  it  will  develop  our  ideal  of  them  ;  therefore,  it  is 
a  dominant  necessity  of  advancing  civilization  that  they  have  it.1 
The  relegating  of  women,  outside  the  period  of  motherhood, 
to  a  life  of  futile  sainthood,  with  exclusive  charge  of  the  goodness 
of  the  community  and  nothing  to  do  with  the  community's 
behavior,  is  a  great  foolishness  at  the  bottom  of  our  social 
habits.  Of  this  ancient  practice  and  the  quite  recent  idealization 
of  it,  of  the  damage  it  has  done  to  men  and  women  and  children, 
no  history  can  give  the  account.  Nor  is  it  easy  to  establish  a 
sense  of  this  in  an  age  which  is  permeated  by  the  sentiments  of 
a  degenerate  feudalism.  It  may  awake  the  sane  and  heroic  in 
us,  however,  to  recall  the  pagan  ideal  of  Plato.  He  says,  in  the 
seventh  book  of  the  laws  : 

The  legislator  ought  to  be  whole  and  perfect,  and  not  half  a  man  only.  He 
ought  not  to  let  the  female  sex  live  softly  and  waste  money  and  have  no  order 
of  life,  while  he  takes  the  utmost  care  of  the  male  sex,  and  leaves  half  of  life 
only  blessed  with  happiness  when  he  might  have  made  the  whole  state  happy. 

Two  truths  that  will  be  news  to  many  after  two  thousand  years 
are  contained  in  that  sentence.  First,  that  it  is  just  as  important 

1  I  cannot  refrain  from  saying  a  word  here  in  apparent  contradiction  of  my 
theme.  It  is  addressed  to  those  self-assured  reformers  who,  with  small  sense  for 
the  real  in  history,  find  themselves  in  too  fatuous  agreement  with  that  theme. 
There  was  scope  for  great  character,  and  life's  full  experience,  in  the  lot  of 
woman  long  ago,  when  many  arts  and  industries  and  the  business  management  of 
them,  and  of  a  household,  fell  to  her.  Spirited  and  splendidly  intelligent  women 
lived  then.  And  they  profited  by  opportunities  for  growth  which  are  now  gone. 
There  are  few  places  to  be  filled  in  the  modern  industrial  world  equal  in  variety 
and  amplitude  to  the  place  of  the  "  circumscribed"  women  of  old.  Hence,  in  gain- 
ing, through  the  development  of  industry,  a  great  social  freedom,  women  have 
lost  in  many  cases  a  valuable  breadth  of  experience.  It  is,  however,  lost  irretriev- 
ably, and  now  we  must  replace  it  to  what  extent  we  can.  We  must  replace  that 
ample  interest  and  stimulus  to  growth  which  women  used  to  find  in  the  home  with 
interests  beyond  it,  and  chief  among  them  —  as  being  equally  vital  —  the  civic 
interest.  Thus  in  so  far  as  women  are  gaining  freedom  in  this  era,  they  demand 
citizenship  as  a  guarantee  of  that  freedom,  and  in  so  far  as  they  are  losing  a 
certain  breadth  of  life  they  require  citizenship  as  a  guarantee  against  narrowness. 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     475 

for  women  to  be  happy  as  for  men  ;  and,  second,  that  true  hap- 
piness for  the  best  spirits  of  either  sex  does  not  consist  in  living 
softly  and  wasting  money  and  having  no  order  of  life,  but  in 
regulated  purpose  and  achievement. 

Compare  that  elevated  utterance  with  the  ideals  of  the  age  just 
behind  us.  Take  a  sentence  from  Martin  Luther : 

The  woman's  will,  as  God  says,  shall  be  subject  to  the  man,  and  he  shall  be 
her  master;  that  is,  the  woman  shall  not  live  according  to  her  free  will  .  .  . 
and  must  neither  begin  nor  complete  anything  without  the  man ;  where  he  is, 
there  must  she  be,  and  bend  before  him  as  before  her  master,  whom  she  shall 
fear,  and  to  whom  she  shall  be  subject  and  obedient. 

The  same  morbid  tyranny  appears,  although  without  the  offense 
of  imputing  it  to  God,  in  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau,  a  preacher  of 
the  native  equality  of  men  : 

The  education  of  the  women  should  be  always  relative  to  the  men.  To 
please,  to  be  useful  to  us,  to  make  us  love  and  esteem  them,  to  educate  us 
when  young,  to  take  care  of  us  when  grown  up,  to  advise,  to  console  us,  to 
render  our  lives  easy  and  agreeable  :  these  are  the  duties  of  women  at  all  times 
and  what  they  should  be  taught  in  their  infancy. 

In  these  quotations  the  ideal  woman,  although  drained  of 
intelligence  and  power,  appears  to  retain  a  monopoly  of  the 
distinctly  Christian  virtues,  while  the  man  permits  himself,  upon 
Biblical  or  other  authority,  the  bearing  of  a  despot.  If  you  add 
to  these  ethics  a  certain  idealization  of  that  powerless  woman,  a 
tendency  to  erect  her  enforced  feebleness  into  a  holy  thing,  and 
add  also  a  sentimental  subservience  of  the  man  to  this  enslaved 
queen  in  matters  of  no  moment,  you  have  the  attitude  of  the 
leisure  class  of  our  own  day,  our  inheritance  of  elite  sentiment. 
It  is  expressed  by  Lyman  Abbott  in  his  little  book  about  the 
womanly  woman  : 1 

When  the  wedding-day  comes  she  has  no  desire  to  omit  from  the  service 
the  promise  to  obey.  .  .  .  She  wishes  not  to  submit  a  reluctant  will  to  his,  but 
to  make  his  will  hef  own.  She  wishes  a  sovereign  and  is  glad  to  have  found 
him.  .  .  .  To  give  up  her  home,  abandon  her  name,  merge  her  personality  in 
his  keeping  —  this  is  her  glad  ambition,  and  it  swallows  up  all  other  ambitions. 

1  The  Home  Builder.     Iloughton  Mifflin  Company,  1908. 


476  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

In  this  modern  example  it  is  still  tyrannically  demanded  of 
the  woman  that  she  confine  herself  to  the  virtues  of  passivity, 
but  the  demand  is  made  in  morbid  idealism  rather  than  mere 
brutal  bigotry. 

It  ought  to  be  necessary  only  to  point  away  from  these  unnatural 
dogmas  to  the  great  judgment  of  Plato ;  it  ought  to  be  necessary 
only  to  recall  the  high  attitude  of  Jesus.1  It  wants  no  argument 
to  support  the  development  of  women,  for  a  developed  personality 
is  a  good  that  justifies  itself.  The  purpose  of  life  is  that  it  be 
greatly  lived,  and  it  can  be  greatly  lived  only  by  great  characters. 
Yet  it  can  be  shown,  upon  a  practical  demand,  for  what  special 
purposes  we  need  women  of  great  spirit. 

We  need  them,  in  the  first  place,  for  the  cultivation  of  a 
certain  gentle  humility  and  good  sense  in  their  husbands.  It  is 
bad  for  a  man's  morals  to  regard  himself  as  the  constant  purveyor 
of  privilege  to  a  supposedly  inferior  being.  This  attitude  of  con- 
descending overbearance  toward  women  is  one  of  the  chief  follies 
of  that  very  immature  person,  the  average  man  of  affairs.  And 
when  he  tries  to  make  up  for  it  with  a  great  deal  of  sentimental 
adoration,  he  makes  it  only  the  more  foolish.  For  to  worship 
that  which  is  held  inferior  in  power  and  wisdom  because  it  excels 
in  innocence  of  the  actual  world,  is  the  old  and  sure  way  to 
falsify  your  moral  sentiments.  We  hear  to-day  a  good  deal  of 
protest  against  that  "  double  standard  of  morality,"  which  allows 
men,  but  not  women,  to  be  vicious  without  loss  of  standing. 
The  roots  of  that  evil  lie  in  this  false  attitude.  When  we  have 
abolished  that  double  standard  of  morality  which  allows  the  "  ideal 
woman  "  to  be  ignorant  and  silly,  we  shall  see  the  disappearance 
of  that  double  standard  which  allows  her  husband  to  be  profligate 
and  self -centered.  When  we  have  less  innocence  and  more  virtue 
in  women,  we  shall  have  less  vice  and  more  virtue  in  men.  Both 
changes  will  be  for  the  better,  but  the  latter  more  obviously. 

1  His  superiority  to  His  age,  and  especially  to  Saint  Paul,  in  wisdom  upon  this 
point,  is  shown  negatively  in  all  His  recorded  dealings  with  women,  so  far  as  I 
remember,  but  particularly  in  that  interview  at  the  well  with  a  woman,  and  a 
Samaritan,  which  so  astonished  His  followers. 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     477 

And  therefore  I  put  it  first,  if  not  greatest,  of  the  uses  of  the 
developed  woman  that  she  will  foster  the  development  of  men. 

But  she  will  also  foster  the  development  of  the  home  and  the 
human  family,  and  make  that  institution  truly  beautiful  in  its 
nature  and  great  in  its  effect.  That  such  results  will  ultimately 
flow  from  this  political  reform,  is  proved  by  the  outcries  which 
oppose  it :  "  You  are  bringing  dissension  into  our  homes  ! "  "You 
are  striking  a  blow  at  the  family,  which  is  the  cornerstone  of 
society!"  —hysterical  outcries  from  persons  whose  families  are 
already  tottering.  Certain  it  is  that  many  of  these  cornerstones  of 
society  are  tottering.  And  why  are  they  tottering  ?  Because  there 
dwell  in  them  triviality  and  vacuity,  which  prepare  the  way  of  the 
devil.  Who  can  think  that  intellectual  divergence,  disagreement 
upon  a  great  public  question,  could  disrupt  a  family  worth  holding 
together  ?  On  the  contrary,  nothing  save  a  community  of  great 
interests,  with  agreement  and  disagreement  inevitable,  can  revive 
a  fading  romance.  When  we  have  made  matrimony  synonymous 
with  a  high  and  equal  comradeship,  we  shall  have  done  the  one 
thing  that  we  can  do  to  rescue  those  families  which  are  the  tot- 
tering cornerstones  of  society. 

A  greater  service  of  the  developed  woman,  however,  will  be 
her  service  in  motherhood.  For  we  are  in  extreme  need  of 
mothers  who  have  that  wisdom  which  comes  from  wide  interest, 
and  wide  activity,  and  wide  experience  of  the  world,  and  from  no 
other  source  under  the  sun.  To  hear  the  sacred  duty  of  mother- 
hood advanced  as  a  reason  why  woman  should  not  become  public- 
spirited  and  active  and  effective,  you  would  think  we  had  no 
greater  duty  to  our  race  and  nation  than  to  rear  in  innocence  a 
generation  of  grown-up  babies.  Keep  your  mothers  in  a  state  of 
invalid  remoteness  from  genuine  life,  and  who  is  to  arm  the 
young  with  efficient  virtue  ?  Are  their  mothers  only  to  suckle 
them,  and  then  for  their  education  pass  them  over  to  some  one 
who  knows  life  ?  To  educate  a  child  is  to  lead  him  out  into  the 
world  of  his  experience ;  it  is  not  to  propel  him  with  ignorant 
admonitions  from  the  door.  A  million  lives  wrecked  at  the  off-go 
can  bear  witness  to  the  failure  of  that  method.  I  think  that  the 


478  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

best  thing  you  could  add  to  the  mothers  of  posterity  is  a  little  of 
the  rough  sagacity  and  humor  of  public  affairs. 

Such  are  the  great  reasons  for  making  the  sexes  equal  in  poli- 
tics ;  such  have  been  the  reasons  ever  since  the  question  was  first 
broached  in  the  age  of  Pericles.  It  is  not  merely  a  demand  for 
justice  upon  the  part  of  citizens  unrecognized.  It  is  not  a  plan  to 
prevent  corrupt  practices  in  politics,  or  instill  into  the  people's 
representatives  any  virtue  other  than  the  virtue  of  representing 
the  whole  people.  It  is  an  act  demanded  by  the  ideal  principle  to 
the  proof  of  which  our  government  is  devoted.  It  is  the  solution, 
indicated  by  that  principle,  of  one  of  the  chief  problems  of  our 
industrial  civilization.  And  it  is  a  heroic  step  that  we  can  take 
with  nature  in  the  evolution  of  a  great  and  symmetrical  race. 


47.    SOME  OF  THE  REASONS  AGAINST  WOMAN   SUFFRAGE.1 

It  has  been  said  that  the  question  of  the  rights  and  employ- 
ment of  women  should  be  treated  without  regard  to  sex.  It 
should  rather  be  said  that  those  who  consider  it  regardless  of  sex 
do  not  consider  it  at  all.  It  will  not  do  to  exclude  from  the  prob- 
lem the.  chief  factor  in  it,  and  deal  with  women  only  as  if  they 
were  smaller  and  weaker  men.  Yet  these  have  been  the  tactics 
of  the  agitators  for  female  suffrage,  and  to  them  they  mainly  owe 
what  success  they  have  had.  Hence  their  extreme  sensitiveness 
whenever  the  subject  is  approached  on  its  most  essential  side. 
If  it  could  be  treated  like  other  subjects,  and  discussed  fully  and 
freely,  the  cause  of  the  self-styled  reformers  would  have  been 
hopeless  from  the  first.  It  is  happy  for  them  that  the  relations 
of  women  to  society  cannot  be  so  discussed  without  giving  just 
offense.  Their  most  important  considerations  can  be  touched  but 
slightly  ;  and  even  then  offense  will  be  taken. 

Whatever  liberty  the  best  civilization  may  accord  to  women, 
they  must  always  be  subject  to  restrictions  unknown  to  the  other 

1  15y  Francis  Parkman.  Pamphlet  issued  by  the  Massachusetts  Association 
Opposed  to  the  Further  Extension  of  Suffrage  to  Women.  This  polemic  was 
first  published  some  time  between  1876  and  1880. 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     479 

sex,  and  they  can  never  dispense  with  the  protecting  influences 
which  society  throws  about  them.  A  man,  in  lonely  places,  has 
nothing  to  lose  but  life  and  property ;  and  he  has  nerve  and 
muscles  to  defend  them.  He  is  free  to  go  whither  he  pleases, 
and  run  what  risks  he  pleases.  Without  a  radical  change  in 
human  nature,  of  which  the  world  has  never  given  the  faintest 
sign,  women  cannot  be  equally  emancipated.  It  is  not  a  question 
of  custom,  habit,  or  public  opinion  ;  but  of  an  all-pervading  force, 
always  formidable  in  the  vast  number  of  men  in  whom  it  is  not 
controlled  by  higher  forces.  A  woman  is  subject,  also,  to  many 
other  restrictions,  more  or  less  stringent,  necessary  to  the  main- 
tenance of  self-respect  and  the  respect  of  others,  and  yet  placing 
her  at  a  disadvantage,  as  compared  to  men,  in  the  active  work  of 
the  world.  All  this  is  mere  truism,  but  the  plainest  truism  may 
be  ignored  in  the  interest  of  a  theory  or  a  "  cause." 

Again,  everybody  knows  that  the  physical  and  mental  consti- 
tution of  woman  is  more  delicate  than  in  the  other  sex  ;  and,  we 
may  add,  the  relations  between  mind  and  body  are  more  intimate 
and  subtile.  It  is  true  that  they  are  abundantly  so  in  men  ;  but 
their  harder  organism  is  neither  so  sensitive  to  disturbing  influ- 
ences nor  subject  to  so  many  of  them. 

It  is  these  and  other  inherent  conditions,  joined  to  the  engross- 
ing nature  of  a  woman's  special  functions,  that  have  determined 
through  all  time  her  relative  position.  What  we  have  just  said  — 
and  we  might  have  said  much  more  —  is  meant  as  a  reminder 
that  her  greatest  limitations  are  not  of  human  origin.  Men  did 
not  make  them,  and  they  cannot  unmake  them.  Through  them, 
God  and  Nature  have  ordained  that  those  subject  to  them  shall 
not  be  forced  to  join  in  the  harsh  conflicts  of  the  world  militant. 
It  is  folly  to  ignore  them,  or  try  to  counteract  them  by  political 
and  social  quackery.  They  set  at  naught  legislatures  and  peoples. 

Here  we  may  notice  an  idea  which  seems  to  prevail  among 
the  woman  suffragists,  that  they  have  argued  away  the  causes 
which  have  always  determined  the  substantial  relations  of  the 
sexes.  This  notion  arises  mainly  from  the  fact  that  they  have 
had  the  debate  very  much  to  themselves.  Their  case  is  that  of 
the  self-made  philosopher  who  attacked  the  theory  of  gravitation, 


480  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

and,  because  nobody  took  the  trouble  to  answer  him,  boasted  that 
he  had  demolished  it,  and  called  it  an  error  of  the  past. 

The  frequent  low  state  of  health  among  American  women  is  a 
fact  as  undeniable  as  it  is  deplorable. 

In  this  condition  of  things,  what  do  certain  women  demand  for 
the  good  of  their  sex  ?  To  add  to  the  excitements  that  are  wast- 
ing them  other  and  greater  excitements,  and  to  cares  too  much 
for  their  strength  other  and  greater  cares.  Because  they  cannot 
do  their  own  work,  to  require  them  to  add  to  it  the  work  of  men, 
and  launch  them  into  the  turmoil  where  the  most  robust  some- 
times fail.  It  is  much  as  if  a  man  in  a  state  of  nervous  exhaus- 
tion were  told  by  his  physician  to  enter  at  once  for  a  foot  race  or 
a  boxing  match. 

To  hold  the  man  responsible  and  yet  deprive  him  of  power  is 
neither  just  nor  rational.  The  man  is  the  natural  head  of  the 
family,  and  is  responsible  for  its  maintenance  and  order.  Hence 
he  ought  to  control  the  social  and  business  agencies  which  are 
essential  to  the  successful  discharge  of  the  trust  imposed  upon  him. 
If  he  is  deprived  of  any  part  of  this  control,  he  should  be  freed 
also  in  the  same  measure  from  the  responsibilities  attached  to  it. 

Woman  suffrage  must  have  one  of  two  effects.  If,  as  many  of 
its  advocates  complain,  women  are  subservient  to  men,  and  do 
nothing  but  what  they  desire,  then  woman  suffrage  will  have  no 
other  result  than  to  increase  the  power  of  the  other  sex ;  if,  on 
the  other  hand,  women  vote  as  they  see  fit,  without  regarding 
their  husbands,  then  unhappy  marriages  will  be  multiplied  and 
divorces  redoubled.  We  cannot  afford  to  add  to  the  elements  of 
domestic  unhappiness. 

One  of  the  chief  dangers  of  popular  government  is  that  of  in- 
considerate and  rash  legislation.  In  impatience  to  be  rid  of  one 
evil,  ulterior  consequences  are  apt  to  be  forgotten.  In  the  haste 
to  redress  one  wrong,  a  door  may  be  opened  to  many.  This  dan- 
ger would  be  increased  immeasurably  if  the  most  impulsive  and 
excitable  half  of  humanity  had  an  equal  voice  in  the  making  of 
laws,  and  in  the  administration  of  them.  Abstract  right  would 
then  be  made  to  prevail  after  a  fashion  somewhat  startling.  A 
lady  of  intelligence  and  admirable  intentions,  an  ardent  partisan 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     481 

on  principles  of  pure  humanitarianism,  confessed  that,  in  the  last 
presidential  election,  Florida  had  given  a  majority  for  the  Demo- 
crats ;  but  insisted  that  it  was  right  to  count  it  for  Hayes,  because 
other  States  had  been  counted  wrongfully  for  Tilden.  It  was  im- 
possible to  make  her  comprehend  that  government  conducted  on 
such  principles  would  end  in  anarchy.  In  politics,  the  virtues  of 
women  would  sometimes  be  as  dangerous  as  their  faults. 

If  the  better  class  of  women  flatter  themselves  that  they  can 
control  the  others,  they  are  doomed  to  disappointment.  They 
will  be  outvoted  in  their  own  kitchens,  without  reckoning  the 
agglomerations  of  poverty,  ignorance,  and  vice,  that  form  a  start- 
ling proportion  of  our  city  populations.  It  is  here  that  the  male 
vote  alone  threatens  our  system  with  its  darkest  perils.  The 
female  vote  would  enormously  increase  the  evil,  for  it  is  often 
more  numerous,  always  more  impulsive  and  less  subject  to  reason, 
and  almost  devoid  of  the  sense  of  responsibility.  Here  the  bad 
politician  would  find  his  richest  resources.  He  could  not  reach 
the  better  class  of  female  voters,  but  the  rest  would  be  ready  to 
his  hand.  Three  fourths  of  them,  when  not  urged  by  some  press- 
ing need  or  contagious  passion,  would  be  moved,  not  by  prin- 
ciples, but  by  personal  predilections. 

It  is  not  woman's  virtues  that  would  be  prominent  or  influential 
in  the  political  arena.  They  would  shun  it  by  an  invincible  repul- 
sion ;  and  the  opposite  qualities  would  be  drawn  into  it.  The 
Washington  lobby  has  given  us  some  means  of  judging  what  we 
may  expect  from  the  woman  "  inside  politics."  If  politics  are  to 
be  purified  by  artfulness,  effrontery,  insensibility,  a  pushing  self- 
assertion,  and  a  glib  tongue,  then  we  may  look  for  regeneration  ; 
for  the  typical  female  politician  will  be  richly  endowed  with  all 
these  gifts. 

Thus  accoutered  for  the  conflict,  she  may  fairly  hope  to  have 
the  better  of  her  masculine  antagonist.  A  woman  has  the  in- 
alienable right  of  attacking  without  being  attacked  in  turn.  She 
may  strike,  but  must  not  be  struck,  either  literally  or  figuratively. 
Most  women  refrain  from  abusing  their  privilege  of  noncombat- 
ants ;  but  there  are  those  in  whom  the  sense  of  impunity  breeds 
the  cowardly  courage  of  the  virago. 


482  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

In  reckoning  the  resources  of  the  female  politicians,  there  is 
one  which  can  by  no  means  be  left  out.  None  know  better  than 
women  the  potency  of  feminine  charms  aided  by  feminine  arts. 
The  woman  "  inside  politics  "  will  not  fail  to  make  use  of  an 
influence  so  subtile  and  strong,  and  of  which  the  management  is 
peculiarly  suited  to  her  talents.  If  —  and  the  contingency  is  in 
the  highest  degree  probable  —  she  is  not  gifted  with  charms  of 
her  own,  she  will  have  no  difficulty  in  finding  and  using  others 
of  her  sex  who  are.  If  report  is  to  be  trusted,  Delilah  has  already 
spread  her  snares  for  the  congressional  Samson  ;  and  the  power 
before  which  the  wise  fail  and  the  mighty  fall  has  been  invoked 
against  the  sages  and  heroes  of  the  Capitol.  When  "woman  "  is 
fairly  "  inside  politics,"  the  sensation  press  will  reap  a  harvest  of 
scandals  more  lucrative  to  itself  than  profitable  to  public  morals. 
And,  as  the  zeal  of  one  class  of  female  reformers  has  been,  and 
no  doubt  will  be,  largely  directed  to  their  grievances  in  matters 
of  sex,  we  shall  have  shrill-tongued  discussions  of  subjects  which 
had  far  better  be  let  alone. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  advocates  of  female  suffrage  do  not 
look  to  political  women  for  the  purifying  of  politics,  but  to  the 
votes  of  the  sex  at  large.  The  two,  however,  cannot  be  sepa- 
rated. It  should  be  remembered  that  the  question  is  not  of  a 
limited  and  select  female  suffrage,  but  of  a  universal  one.  To 
limit  would  be  impossible.  It  would  seek  the  broadest  areas  and 
the  lowest  depths,  and  spread  itself  through  the  marshes  and 
malarious  pools  of  society. 

Again,  one  of  the  chief  arguments  of  the  agitators  is  that  gov- 
ernment without  the  consent  of  the  governed  is  opposed  to 
inalienable  right.  But  most  women,  including  those  of  the  best 
capacity  and  worth,  fully  consent  that  their  fathers,  husbands, 
brothers,  or  friends,  shall  be  their  political  representatives  ;  and 
no  exhortation  or  teasing  has  induced  them  to  withhold  their 
consent.  Nor  is  this  surprising ;  for  a  woman  is  generally  repre- 
sented in  a  far  truer  and  more  intimate  sense  by  her  male  rela- 
tive than  is  this  relative  by  the  candidate  to  whom  he  gives  his 
vote,  commonly  without  knowing  him,  and  often  with  dissent 
from  many  of  his  views. 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     483 

Nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  women  will  have  the  suffrage 
if  they  ever  want  it ;  for  when  they  want  it,  men  will  give  it  to 
them,  regardless  of  consequences.  A  more  than  readiness  on  the 
part  of  men  to  conform  to  the  wishes  of  the  other  sex  is  a 
national  trait  in  America,  though  whether  it  would  survive  the 
advent  of  the  female  politician  is  matter  for  reflection.  We 
venture  to  remind  those  who  demand  woman  suffrage  as  a  right 
that,  even  if  it  were  so,  the  great  majority  of  intelligent  women 
could  judge  for  themselves  whether  to  exercise  it,  better  than  the 
few  who  assume  to  teach  them  their  duty. 

The  agitators  know  well  that,  in  spite  of  their  persistent  impor- 
tunity, the  majority  of  women  are  averse  to  the  suffrage.  ...  A 
small  number  of  women  have  spent  their  time  for  several  decades 
in  ceaseless  demands  for  suffrage,  but  they  have  lost  their  best  argu- 
ment in  failing  to  show  that  they  are  prepared  to  use  the  franchise 
when  they  have  got  it.  A  single  sound  and  useful  contribution  to 
one  side  or  the  other  of  any  question  of  current  politics  —  the 
tariff,  specie  payments,  the  silver  bill,  civil-service  reform,  railroad 
monopoly,  capital  and  labor,  or  a  half  score  of  other  matters  — 
would  have  done  more  for  their  cause  than  years  of  empty  agitation. 

The  agitators  say  that  no  reason  can  be  given  why  women 
should  not  take  a  direct  part  in  politics,  except  that  they  have 
never  done  so.  There  are  other  reasons,  and  strong  ones,  in 
abundance.  But  this  particular  one  is  nevertheless  good.  All 
usages,  laws,  and  institutions  have  risen  and  perished,  and  risen 
and  perished  again.  Their  history  is  the  history  of  mutability 
itself.  But,  from  the  earliest  records  of  mankind  down  to  this 
moment,  in  every  race  and  every  form  or  degree  of  civilization 
or  barbarism,  the  relative  position  of  the  sexes  has  been  essen- 
tially the  same,  with  exceptions  so  feeble,  rare,  and  transient  that 
they  only  prove  the  rule.  Such  permanence  in  the  foundation  of 
society,  while  all  that  rests  upon  it  has  passed  from  change  to 
change,  is  proof  in  itself  that  this  foundation  lies  deep  in  the 
essential  nature  of  things.  It  is  idle  to  prate  of  the  old  time  that 
has  passed  away  and  the  new  time  that  is  coming.  The  "  new 
time  "  can  no  more  stir  the  basis  of  human  nature  than  it  can 
stop  the  movement  of  the  earth. 


484  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

The  cause  of  this  permanence  is  obvious.  Women  have  great 
special  tasks  assigned  them  in  the  work  of  life,  and  men  have 
not.  To  these  tasks  their  whole  nature,  moral  and  physical,  is 
adjusted.  There  is  scarcely  a  distinctive  quality  of  women  that 
has  not  a  direct  or  indirect  bearing  upon  them.  Everything  else 
in  their  existence  is  subordinated  to  the  indispensable  functions 
of  continuing  and  rearing  the  human  race  ;  and,  during  the  best 
years  of  life,  this  work,  fully  discharged,  leaves  little  room  for 
any  other.  Rightly  considered,  it  is  a  work  no  less  dignified  than 
essential.  It  is  the  root  and  stem  of  national  existence,  while  the 
occupations  of  men  are  but  the  leaves  and  branches.  On  women 
of  the  intelligent  and  instructed  classes  depends  the  future  of 
the  nation.  If  they  are  sound  in  body  and  mind,  impart  this 
soundness  to  a  numerous  offspring,  and  rear  them  to  a  sense  of 
responsibility  and  duty,  there  are  no  national  evils  that  we  cannot 
overcome.  If  they  fail  to  do  this  their  part,  then  the  masses  of 
the  coarse  and  unintelligent,  always  of  rapid  increase,  will  over- 
whelm us  and  our  institutions.  When  these  indispensable  duties 
are  fully  discharged,  then  the  suffrage  agitators  may  ask  with 
better  grace,  if  not  with  more  reason,  that  they  may  share  the 
political  functions  of  men. 

It  has  been  claimed  as  a  right  that  woman  should  vote.  It  is 
no  right,  but  a  wrong,  that  a  small  number  of  women  should  im- 
pose on  all  the  rest  political  duties  which  there  is  no  call  for  their 
assuming,  which  they  do  not  want  to  assume,  and  which,  if  duly 
discharged,  would  be  a  cruel  and  intolerable  burden.  This  pre- 
tense of  the  female  suffragists  was  reduced  to  an  absurdity  when 
some  of  them  gravely  affirmed  that,  if  a  single  woman  wanted  to 
vote,  all  the  others  ought  to  be  required  to  do  so. 

Government  by  doctrines  of  abstract  right,  of  which  the  French 
Revolution  set  the  example  and  bore  the  fruits,  involves  enormous 
danger  and  injustice.  No  political  right  is  absolute  and  of  uni- 
versal application.  Each  has  its  conditions,  qualifications,  and 
limitations.  If  these  are  disregarded,  one  right  collides  with 
another,  or  with  many  others.  Even  a  man's  right  to  liberty  is 
subject  to  the  condition  that  he  docs  not  use  it  to  infringe  the 
rights  of  his  neighbors.  It  is  in  the  concrete,  and  not  in  the 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     485 

abstract,  that  rights  prevail  in  every  sound  and  wholesome  society. 
They  are  applied  where  they  are  applicable.  A  government  of 
glittering  generalities  quickly  destroys  itself.  The  object  of  gov- 
ernment is  the  accomplishment  of  a  certain  result,  the  greatest 
good  of  the  governed ;  and  the  ways  of  reaching  it  vary  in  differ- 
ent countries  and  different  social  conditions.  Neither  liberty  nor 
the  suffrage  are  the  end  ;  they  are  nothing  but  means  to  reach  it ; 
and  each  should  be  used  to  the  extent  in  which  it  is  best  adapted 
to  its  purpose.  If  the  voting  of  women  conduces  to  the  greatest 
good  of  the  community,  then  they  ought  to  vote,  and  otherwise 
they  ought  not.  The  question  of  female  suffrage  thus  becomes  a 
practical  question,  and  not  one  of  declamation. 

What  would  be  the  results  of  the  general  application  of  the 
so-called  right  to  vote,  a  right  which,  if  it  exists  at  all,  must  be 
common  to  all  mankind  ?  Suppose  that  the  populations  of  Tur- 
key, the  Sudan,  or  Zululand  were  to  attempt  to  exercise  it  and 
govern  themselves  by  universal  popular  suffrage.  The  conse- 
quence would  be  anarchy,  and  a  quick  return  to  despotism  as  a 
relief.  The  same  would  be  the  case,  in  less  degree,  among  peoples 
more  civilized,  yet  not  trained  to  self-government  by  the  habits 
and  experience  of  generations.  In  fact,  there  are  but  a  few  of  the 
most  advanced  nations  in  whom  the  universal  exercise  of  the  pre- 
tended "inalienable  right"  to  vote  would  not  produce  political 
and  social  convulsions.  The  truth  is  this  :  If  the  exercise  of  the 
suffrage  by  any  individual  or  body  of  individuals  involves  detri- 
ment to  the  whole  people,  then  the  right  to  exercise  it  does 
not  exist. 

It  is  the  right  and  the  duty  of  the  people  to  provide  itself  with 
good  government,  and  this  great  practical  right  and  duty  is  im- 
perative and  paramount ;  whatever  conflicts  with  it  must  give  way. 
The  air-blown  theory  of  inalienable  right  is  unworthy  the  good 
sense  of  the  American  people.  The  most  rational  even  of  the 
suffragists  themselves  have  ceased  to  rely  on  it. 

Many  women  of  sense  and  intelligence  are  influenced  by  the 
fact  that  the  woman-suffrage  movement  boasts  itself  a  movement 
of  progress,  and  by  a  wish  to  be  on  the  liberal  or  progressive  side. 
But  the  boast  is  unfounded.  Progress,  to  be  genuine,  must  be  in 


486  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

accord  with  natural  law.  If  it  is  not,  it  ends  in  failure  and  retro- 
gression. To  give  women  a  thorough  and  wholesome  training 
both  of  body  and  mind  ;  to  prepare  such  of  them  as  have  strength 
and  opportunity  for  various  occupations  different  from  what  they 
usually  exercise,  and  above  all  for  the  practice  of  medicine,  in 
which  we  believe  that  they  may  render  valuable  service ;  to  rear 
them  in  more  serious  views  of  life  and  its  responsibilities,  are  all 
in  the  way  of  normal  and  healthy  development :  but  to  plunge 
them  into  politics,  where  they  are  not  needed  and  for  which  they 
are  unfit,  would  be  scarcely  more  a  movement  of  progress  than 
to  force  them  to  bear  arms  and  fight. 

The  social  power  of  women  has  grown  with  the  growth  of 
civilization,  but  their  political  power  has  diminished.  In  former 
times  and  under  low  social  conditions,  women  have  occasionally 
had  a  degree  of  power  in  public  affairs  unknown  in  the  foremost 
nations  of  the  modern  world.  The  most  savage  tribes  on  this  con- 
tinent, the  Six  Nations  of  New  York,  listened,  in  solemn  assem- 
bly, to  the  counsels  of  its  matrons,  with  a  deference  that  has  no 
parallel  among  its  civilized  successors.  The  people  of  ancient 
Lycia,  at  a  time  when  they  were  semibarbarians,  gave  such  power 
to  their  women  that  they  were  reported  to  live  under  a  gynecoc- 
racy,  or  female  government.  The  word  gynecocracy,  by  the  way, 
belongs  to  antiquity.  It  has  no  application  in  modern  life ;  and,  in 
the  past,  its  applications  were  found,  not  in  the  higher  developments 
of  ancient  society,  but  in  the  lower.  Four  hundred  years  before 
Christ,  the  question  of  giving  political  power  to  women  was  agitated 
among  the  most  civilized  of  ancient  peoples,  the  Athenians,  and 
they  would  not  follow  the  example  of  their  barbarian  neighbors. 

The  advocates  of  woman  suffrage  have  ridiculed  the  idea  of 
any  connection  between  voting  and  the  capacity  to  fight.  Their 
attitude  in  this  matter  shows  the  absence  of  reflection  on  ques- 
tions of  government,  or  the  inability  to  form  rational  judgment 
upon  them.  In  fact,  it  is  with  nearly  all  of  them  a  matter,  not 
of  reason,  but  of  sentiment. 

The  human  race  consists  of  two  equal  parts,  the  combatant  and 
the  noncombatant,  and  these  parts  are  separated  by  the  line  of 
sex.  It  is  true  that  some  men  are  permanently  disabled  from 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     487 

fighting,  and  others  may  be  disabled  in  one  year  or  one  month, 
and  fit  to  bear  arms  in  the  next ;  but  the  general  fact  remains 
that  men  are  the  fighting  half  of  humanity,  and  women  are  not. 
Fundamental  laws  are  made  in  reference  to  aggregates  of  persons, 
and  not  to  individual  exceptions  ;  and  it  would  be  absurd  to  exact 
a  surgeon's  certificate  of  military  competency  from  every  voter  at 
the  polls.  It  is  enough  that  he  belongs  to  a  body  which,  as  a 
whole,  can  and  will  fight.  The  question  remains,  What  has  this 
to  do  with  voting  ?  It  has  a  great  deal  to  do  with  it,  and  above 
all  in  a  government  purely  popular. 

Since  history  began,  no  government  ever  sustained  itself  long 
unless  it  could  command  the  physical  force  of  the  nation  ;  and 
this,  whether  the  form  of  government  was  despotism,  constitu- 
tional monarchy,  or  democracy.  The  despot  controls  the  army 
which  compels  the  people  to  obey ;  the  king  and  parliament  con- 
trol the  force  of  the  kingdom,  and  malcontents  dare  not  rise  in 
insurrection  till  they  think  they  have  drawn  away  an  equal  or 
greater  share  of  it.  Finally,  the  majority  in  a  democratic  republic 
feels  secure  that  its  enactments  will  take  effect,  because  the 
defeated  minority,  even  if  it  does  not  respect  law,  will  respect  a 
force  greater  than  its  own.  But  suppose  the  majority  to  consist 
chiefly  of  women.  Then  legality  would  be  on  one  side  and  power 
on  the  other.  The  majority  would  have  the  law,  and  the  minor- 
ity the  courage  and  strength.  Hence,  in  times  of  political  excite- 
ment, when  passions  were  roused  and  great  interests  were  at  stake, 
the  majority,  that  is,  the  legal  authority,  would  need  the  help  of 
a  standing  army.  Without  such  support  the  possession  of  the 
suffrage  by  the  noncombatant  half  of  the  nation  would  greatly 
increase  the  chances  of  civil  discord.  Once  in  our  history  a 
minority  rose  against  the  majority,  in  the  belief  that  it  could  out- 
fight it.  This  would  happen  often  if  the  minority,  as  in  the  sup- 
posed case  of  woman  suffrage,  had  not  only  the  belief  but  the 
certainty  that  it  could  master  the  majority.  It  may  not  be  credit- 
able to  human  nature  that  if  we  would  have  a  stable  government 
it  is  necessary  to  keep  the  balance  of  power  on  the  side  of  law ; 
but  the  business  of  government  is  to  shape  itself  to  the  actual, 
and  not  the  ideal  or  millennial,  condition  of  mankind. 


488  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Suppose,  again,  a  foreign  war  in  which  the  sympathies  of  our 
women  were  enlisted  on  one  side  or  the  other.  Suppose  them  to 
vote  against  the  judgment  of  the  men  that  we  should  take  part  in 
it ;  or,  in  other  words,  that  their  male  fellow  citizens  should  fight 
whether  they  liked  it  or  not.  Would  the  men  be  likely  to  obey  ? 

There  is  another  reason  why  the  giving  of  the  suffrage  to 
women  would  tend  to  civil  discord.  In  the  politics  of  the  future, 
the  predominant,  if  not  the  engrossing,  questions  will  be  to  all 
appearance  those  of  finance  and  the  relations  of  labor  and  capital. 
From  the  nature  of  their  occupations,  as  well  as  other  causes, 
women  in  general  are  ignorant  of  these  matters,  and  not  well 
fitted  to  deal  with  them.  They  require  an  experience,  a  careful 
attention,  a  deliberation  and  coolness  of  judgment,  and  a  freedom 
from  passion,  so  rare  that  at  the  best  their  political  treatment  is 
full  of  difficulty  and  danger.  If  these  qualities  are  rare  in  men, 
they  are  still  more  so  in  women,  and  feminine  instinct  will  not 
in  the  present  case  supply  their  place.  The  peculiar  danger  of 
these  questions  is  that  they  raise  class  animosities,  and  tend  to 
set  the  poor  against  the  rich  and  the  rich  against  the  poor.  They 
become  questions  of  social  antagonism.  Now,  most  of  us  have 
had  occasion  to  observe  how  strong  the  social  rivalries  and  ani- 
mosities of  women  are.  They  far  exceed  those  of  men.  If,  in 
the  strife  between  labor  and  capital,  which,  without  great  self- 
restraint  on  both  sides,  is  likely  to  be  a  fierce  one,  women  should 
be  called  to  an  active  part,  the  effect  would  be  like  throwing 
pitch  and  resin  into  the  fire.  The  wives  and  daughters  of  the 
poor  would  bring  into  the  contest  a  wrathful  jealousy  and  hate 
against  the  wives  and  daughters  of  the  rich,  far  more  vehement 
than  the  corresponding  passions  in  their  husbands  and  brothers. 

The  real  issue  is  this  :  Is  the  object  of  government  the  good 
of  the  governed,  or  is  it  not  ?  A  late  writer  on  woman  suffrage 
says  that  it  is  not.  According  to  her,  the  object  of  government 
is  to  give  liis  or  her  rights  to  everybody.  Others  among  the 
agitators  do  not  venture  either  on  this  flat  denial  or  this  brave 
assertion,  but  only  hover  about  them  with  longing  looks.  Virtu- 
ally they  maintain  that  the  object  of  government  is  the  realization 
of  certain  ideas  or  theories.  They  believe  in  principles,  and  so 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     489 

do  we ;  they  believe  in  rights,  and  so  do  we.  But  as  the  sublime 
may  pass  into  the  ridiculous,  so  the  best  principles  may  be  trans- 
ported into  regions  of  folly  or  diabolism.  There  are  minds  so 
constituted  that  they  can  never  stop  till  they  have  run  every  virtue 
into  its  correlative  weakness  or  vice.  Government  should  be 
guided  by  principles  ;  but  they  should  be  sane  and  not  crazy,  sober 
and  not  drunk.  They  should  walk  on  solid  ground,  and  not  roam 
the  clouds  hanging  to  a  bag  of  gas. 

Rights  may  be  real  or  unreal.  Principles  may  be  true  or  false ; 
but  even  the  best  and  truest  cannot  safely  be  pushed  too  far,  or 
in  the  wrong  direction.  The  principle  of  truth  itself  may  be 
carried  into  absurdity.  The  saying  is  old  that  truth  should  not 
be  spoken  at  all  times ;  and  those  whom  a  sick  conscience  worries 
into  habitual  violation  of  the  maxim  are  imbeciles  and  nuisances. 
Religion  may  pass  into  morbid  enthusiasm  or  wild  fanaticism, 
and  turn  from  a  blessing  to  a  curse.  So  the  best  of  political 
principles  must  be  kept  within  bounds  of  reason,  or  they  will 
work  mischief.  That  greatest  and  most  difficult  of  sciences,  the 
science  of  government,  dealing  with  interests  so  delicate,  compli- 
cated, and  antagonistic,  becomes  a  perilous  guide  when  it  deserts 
the  ways  of  temperance. 

The  suffragists'  idea  of  government  is  not  practical,  but  utterly 
unpractical.  It  is  not  American,  but  French.  It  is  that  govern- 
ment of  abstractions  and  generalities  which  found  its  realization 
in  the  French  Revolution,  and  its  apostle  in  the  depraved  and 
half-crazy  man  of  genius,  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau.  The  French 
had  an  excuse  for  their  frenzy  in  the  crushing  oppression  they 
had  just  flung  off  and  in  their  inexperience  of  freedom.  We 
have  no  excuse.  Since  the  nation  began  we  have  been  free  and 
our  liberty  is  in  danger  from  nothing  but  its  own  excesses.  Since 
France  learned  to  subject  the  ideas  of  Rousseau  to  the  principles 
of  stable  freedom  embodied  in  the  parliamentary  government  of 
England  and  in  our  own  republicanism,  she  has  emerged  from 
alternate  tumult  and  despotism  to  enter  the  paths  of  hope  and 
progress. 

The  government  of  abstractions  has  been  called,  sometimes  the 
a  priori,  and  sometimes  the  sentimental,  method.  We  object  to 


490  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

this  last  term,  unless  it  is  carefully  defined.  Sentiments,  like 
principles,  enter  into  the  life  of  nations  as  well  as  that  of  indi- 
viduals ;  and  they  are  vital  to  both.  But  they  should  be  healthy, 
and  not  morbid  ;  rational,  and  not  extravagant.  It  is  not  common 
sense  alone  that  makes  the  greatness  of  states ;  neither  is  it  senti- 
ments and  principles  alone.  It  is  these  last  joined  with  reason, 
reflection,  and  moderation.  Through  this  union  it  is  that  one 
small  island  has  become  the  mighty  mother  of  nations ;  and  it  is 
because  we  ourselves,  her  greatest  offspring,  have  chosen  the 
paths  of  Hampden,  Washington,  and  Franklin,  and  not  those  of 
Rousseau,  that  we  have  passed  safe  through  every  danger,  and 
become  the  wonder  and  despair  of  despotism. 

Out  of  the  wholesome  fruits  of  the  earth,  and  the  staff  of  life 
itself,  the  perverse  chemistry  of  man  distills  delirious  vapors, 
which,  condensed  and  bottled,  exalt  his  brain  with  glorious  fan- 
tasies, and  then  leave  him  in  the  mud.  So  it  is  with  the  unhappy 
suffragists.  From  the  sober  words  of  our  ancestors  they  extract 
the  means  of  mental  inebriety.  Because  the  fathers  of  the  repub- 
lic gave  certain  reasons  to  emphasize  their  creed  that  America 
should  not  be  taxed  because  America  was  not  represented  in  the 
British  Parliament,  they  cry  out  that  we  must  fling  open  the  flood- 
gates to  vaster  tides  of  ignorance  and  folly,  strengthen  the  evil 
of  our  system  and  weaken  the  good,  feed  old  abuses,  hatch  new 
ones,  and  expose  all  our  large  cities  —  we  speak  with  deliberate 
conviction  —  to  the  risk  of  anarchy.1 

Neither  Congress,  nor  the  States,  nor  the  united  voice  of  the 
whole  people  could  permanently  change  the  essential  relations  of 
the  sexes.  Universal  female  suffrage,  even  if  decreed,  would 
undo  itself  in  time  ;  but  the  attempt  to  establish  it  would  work 
deplorable  mischief.  The  question  is,  whether  the  persistency  of 
a  few  agitators  shall  plunge  us  blindfold  into  the  most  reckless 
of  all  experiments  ;  whether  we  shall  adopt  this  supreme  device 
for  developing  the  defects  of  women,  and  demolish  their  real 

1  Counting  Illinois,  in  which  women  were  in  1913  granted  the  right  to  vote  for 
presidential  electors  and  for  statutory  municipal,  township,  and  county  officers, 
there  are  now  (1916)  over  4,000,000  women  in  the  United  States  alone  who  have 
the  franchise. —  F.n. 


THE  LEGAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATUS  OF  WOMEN     491 

power  to  build  an  ugly  mockery  instead.  For  the  sake  of  woman- 
hood, let  us  hope  not.  In  spite  of  the  effect  on  the  popular 
mind  of  the  incessant  repetition  of  a  few  trite  fallacies,  and  in 
spite  of  the  squeamishness  that  prevents  the  vast  majority  averse 
to  the  movement  from  uttering  a  word  against  it,  let  us  trust  that 
the  good  sense  of  the  American  people  will  vindicate  itself 
against  this  most  unnatural  and  pestilent  revolution.  In  the  full 
and  normal  development  of  womanhood  lie  the  best  interests  of 
the  world.  Let  us  labor  earnestly  for  it ;  and,  that  we  may  not 
labor  in  vain,  let  us  save  women  from  the  barren  perturbations 
of  American  politics.  Let  us  respect  them  ;  and,  that  we  may  do 
so,  let  us  pray  for  deliverance  from  female  suffrage. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT :  ECONOMIC,  SOCIAL, 
AND  ETHICAL  CONSIDERATIONS 

Woman  and  the  occupations,  493. —  Effect  of  society  life  and  fashion  upon  women, 

509. —  How  home  conditions  react  upon  the  family,  521. —  Woman  service,  527. 

—  The  economic  dependence  of  women,  528.  —  The  postgraduate  mother,  535. 

[The  statutory  modifications  of  the  common  law,  alluded  to  in 
the  preceding  chapter,1  which  gradually  gave  to  women  a  legal 
personality,  with  the  right  to  own  and  control  property,  make 
contracts,  to  sue  and  be  sued,  to  devise  property  by  will,  etc., 
have  been  due  in  large  part,  no  doubt,  to  the  development  of  an 
elementary  sense  of  justice  toward  women,  but  this  was  stimulated 
greatly  by  the  changed  economic  condition  of  women  brought 
about  by  the  Industrial  Revolution.  The  transformation  of  meth- 
ods of  production  from  the  old  domestic  system  to  the  factory 
regime,  bringing  in  its  train  as  it  necessarily  did  the  transference 
of  millions  of  unmarried  girls  and  women  from  the  unpaid  in- 
dustry of  the  old  industrial  household  to  the  paid  work  of  the 
factory  and  shop,  is  the  historical  cause  of  much  that  is  of  fun- 
damental significance  in  the  present  woman  movement.  It  is  one 
reason,  for  instance,  why  the  argument  for  equal  suffrage  has 
shifted  from  the  early  emphasis  on  natural  rights  to  the  modern 
plea  for  suffrage  as  a  social  expediency  and  a  social  justice  in 
view  of  the  fact  that  so  many  millions  of  women  are  at  work 
outside  the  home  and  under  conditions  that  demand  the  franchise 
as  a  matter  of  protection. 

The  entrance  of  women  into  industry,  mercantile  and  clerical 
pursuits,  and  the  professions  constitutes  one  of  the  most  profound 
economic  and  social  changes  in  history.  It  has  given  rise  to  a 
set  of  conditions  which  it  is  the  task  of  those  actively  engaged 

1  Page  447. 
492 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT       493 

in  finding  solutions  for  the  many-faceted  labor  problem  to  correct 
—  long  hours,  less  than  subsistence  wages,  lack  of  organization 
and  poor  bargaining  capacity,  unsanitary  and  unfair  conditions  of 
work,  and  the  like.  Into  these  specific  matters,  despite  their 
present  signal  importance  to  the  welfare  of  the  working  women 
and  to  society  as  a  whole,  this  book  does  not  attempt  to  enter. 
The  change  in  woman's  economic  status  has  far-reaching  conse- 
quences, which  must  carry  those  who  are  concerned  not  only 
with  immediate  problems  but  with  the  future  long-run  develop- 
ment and  welfare  of  society  far  beyond  the  confines  of  the  ques- 
tion of  pecuniary  justice.  Attention  is  here  therefore  the  rather 
directed  to  certain  suggestions  as  to  the  social  and  ethical  conse- 
quences of  the  old  domestic  traditions  and  of  the  new  industrial 
opportunities  (or  lack  of  them,  as  the  case  may  be)  with  regard 
to  the  character  and  ambitions  and  social  economy  of  girls  and 
women ;  to  the  larger  psychological  and  ethical  influence  of  work 
outside  the  home  ;  to  the  deeply  important  question  as  to  whether 
it  is  possible  for  women  in  any  large  number  to  combine  and 
harmonize  the  function  of  maternity  with  a  specialized  economic 
work  other  than  housekeeping ;  and  to  the  ethics  of  economic 
dependence  and  economic  independence,  respectively.  Thought 
along  these  lines  should  not  only  make  clear  the  economic  and 
ethical  causes  which  lie  back  of  the  power  and  breadth  of  the 
present  complex  and  not  wholly  unified  feminist  movement,  but 
lead  to  some  basis  of  scientific  and  ethical  judgment  as  to  the  aim 
and  content  of  the  movement.] 

48.    WOMAN  AND  THE  OCCUPATIONS  l 

The  women  who  are  interested  in  suffrage  for  their  sex,  and 
who  have  shown  themselves  keen  in  utilizing  all  the  arguments 
in  favor  of  this  movement,  have  grasped  at  the  idea  set  forth  by 
anthropologists  that  the  women  of  early  society  occupied  a  promi- 
nent place  in  the  political  life  of  those  times.  And  it  is  certainly 
true  that  the  women  of  savage  and  barbarous  societies  and  even 

1  By  W.  I.  Thomas.    Adapted  from  the  American  Magazine,  September,  1909, 
pp. 463-470. 


494  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  women  of  our  own  historical  times  have  sometimes  had  a 
more  honorable  and  functional  if  not  a  more  romantic  position 
than  the  women  of  to-day.  But  I  notice  that  the  women  who  are 
using  this  argument  for  the  advancement  of  woman's  suffrage 
are  ignoring  the  fact  that  the  women  had  even  a  more  important 
relation  to  the  occupational  than  to  the  political  life  of  those  times. 
It  is  true  that  the  women  of  the  Wyandot  tribe  of  Indians  con- 
stituted four  fifths  of  the  civil  council  of  that  tribe,  but  they  had 
no  voice  in  the  military  council,  and  the  recognition  which  they 
had  was  due  to  the  fact  that  about  four  fifths  of  the  tribal  indus- 
tries were  in  their  hands,  in  addition  to  the  main  care  of  the 
children.  Tacitus  states  that  the  ancient  Germans  "  consulted 
their  women  in  all  grave  matters,"  but  it  is  also  true  that  in  these 
times  the  women  performed  all  the  labors  which  built  up  society, 
except  only  the  fighting.  Before  the  Roman  law  had  modified 
the  German  life,  the  woman  was  in  possession  of  all  the  house- 
hold goods,  and  in  fact  these  could  be  inherited  only  by  women, 
never  by  men.  In  somewhat  later  times,  as  we  see  from  a  col- 
lection of  laws  called  the  Sachsenspicgel,  the  man's  goods  were 
his  sword,  his  harness,  and  his  horse.  As  a  further  concession 
he  had  two  dishes,  a  towel,  a  tablecloth,  and  a  piece  of  bedding, 
which  had  originally  been  his  war  blanket. 

The  women  of  these  times  built  the  houses,  cultivated  and 
owned  the  land,  and  did  the  manufacturing,  with  such  assistance 
as  they  could  get  from  the  men.  They  created  the  goods,  and 
men  had  as  yet  devised  no  means  of  dislodging  them  from  the 
position  of  importance  to  which  their  labors  had  elevated  them. 
No  one  would  wish  to  restore  a  state  of  society  where  the  women 
bore  the  whole  industrial  burden,  but  it  is  noticeable  that  the  ef- 
fect of  these  varied  occupational  activities  on  early  women  was 
excellent,  both  in  respect  to  their  character  and  their  social  posi- 
tion. They  were  functional,  strong,  and  normal,  and  they  had  a 
dignity  and  respect  worthy  of  their  work.  And  it  is  also  signifi- 
cant that  wherever  women  have  some  definite  occupational  inter- 
ests in  the  society  of  to-day,  they  still  retain  this  real  dignity  and 
respect,  and  they  retain  them  nowhere  else.  In  colonial  and 
frontier  life,  and  likewise  in  the  poor  and  the  not-very-rich  classes 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT  495 

of  society  in  general,  woman  is  still  functional  and  is  more  likely 
to  be  accepted  as  an  individual.  .  .  .  The  most  pitiful  and  the 
most  just  cry  which  I  have  heard  from  women  comes  from  peas- 
ant Russia.  The  women  of  the  three  villages  of  Tver  recently 
sent  a  message  to  the  Duma  begging  that  they  should  have  the 
same  rights  as  the  men.  "Till  now,"  they  said,  "even  though 
we  were  beaten  sometimes,  still  we  decided  various  matters  to- 
gether. .  .  .  Have  pity  on  us,  in  the  name  of  God  !  We  had 
formerly  the  same  rulers  as  our  husbands.  Now  our  husbands 
are  going  to  write  the  laws  for  us."  These  women  are  not  sup- 
ported by  their  husbands  and  they  cannot  apprehend  why  they 
should  be  ruled  by  them. 

Women  have  lost  their  importance  in  society  and  their  natu- 
ral character  as  they  have  been  withdrawn  from  the  real  work  of 
society,  and  they  have  been  particularly  and  wholly  excluded  from 
politics  because  politics  has  been  and  continues  to  be  a  continua- 
tion of  those  righting  activities  with  which  women  have  never 
had  anything  to  do.  And  they  will  regain  and  maintain  their 
normal  position  in  society  in  just  the  proportion  that  they  regain 
their  relation  to  the  activities  of  society.  The  glorification  of 
fighting,  with  its  attendant  contempt  for  labor,  is  one  of  the 
worst  turns  taken  in  the  development  of  our  society.  As  early 
as  Tacitus  the  German  warrior  considered  it  "  a  dull  and  stupid 
thing  to  painfully  accumulate  by  the  sweat  of  his  brow  what 
might  be  won  with  a  little  blood."  And  some  centuries  later 
we  find  the  sentiment  commonly  accepted  that  work  was  not 
"honest"  in  a  "gentleman."  War  was  the  gentlemanly  occu- 
pation—  the  "great  game"  it  is  constantly  called  in  the  old 
literature  —  and  not  only  the  laborer  but  the  scholar,  the  "  clerk  " 
as  they  called  him,  was  "  a  thing  of  naught."  This  sentiment 
was  also  the  direct  forerunner  of  that  distemper  which  we  call 
romanticism  toward  women.  The  lines  of  Guido  Guinicelli, 

Before  the  gentle  heart  in  Nature's  scheme 
Love  was  not,  nor  the  gentle  heart  ere  Love, 

express  the  general  sentiment  that  refined  feeling  and  passion 
were  a  monopoly  of  the  aristocracy,  and  it  was  demanded  that 


496  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  women  of  the  aristocracy  should  be  as  delicate  as  this  senti- 
ment. The  true  lady  was  the  prize  of  the  true  gentleman,  and 
that  must  remain  her  only  occupation. 

But  in  the  meantime  our  ideas  of  value  have  been  revolution- 
ized. We  now  appreciate  intelligence  more  highly  than  fighting, 
and  creative  activity  more  than  "conspicuous  leisure,"  and  we 
have  a  growing  conception  of  the  dignity  of  labor.  In  America, 
particularly,  the  conception  of  the  value  and  even  the  obligation 
of  labor  has  grown  until  the  son  of  the  rich  man  is  beginning 
to  be  ashamed  not  to  work,  just  as  he  was  formerly  ashamed  to 
work.  The  old  feeling  has  survived  only  in  the  tendency  to  ex- 
empt women  from  labor  where  this  is  economically  possible,  to 
keep  them  at  any  rate  as  the  sign  of  an  aristocratic  grade.  We 
are  still  ashamed  of  the  mention  of  work  in  connection  with  the 
women  for  whom  we  are  responsible. 

At  the  same  time  the  spirit  of  democracy  and  individualism 
is  not  a  thing  of  applicability  to  men  alone.  Without  any  logical 
design  we  have  been  educating  our  girls  as  well  as  our  boys,  and 
women  are  beginning  to  wish  to  resume  their  personality  in  pre- 
cisely the  same  way  that  "the  masses"  yearned  for  this  and 
achieved  it.  Indeed,  the  well-born  or  educated  women  who  have 
so  far  freed  themselves  from  habit  and  tradition  as  to  enter  the 
world  as  individuals,  no  longer  find  any  serious  opposition,  and 
they  are  succeeding  in  the  arts  and  professions  at  least  as  well 
as  men  would  succeed  if  they  had  been  to  the  same  degree  de- 
prived of  personality  and  limited  in  opportunity. 

But  the  question  of  woman's  work  is  no  longer  one  of  senti- 
ment alone.  Under  our  individualistic  and  competitive  indus- 
trial system  men  are  no  longer  able  to  keep  their  women  or  even 
their  children  at  home.  Both  Mr.  Booth  and  Mr.  Rowntree  esti- 
mate that  out  of  a  population  of  40,000,000  in  Great  Britain, 
12,000,000  are  either  under  or  on  the  poverty  line.  The  women 
and  even  the  children  are  forced  to  work,  because  the  present 
organization  of  society  is  no  longer  able  to  feed  them.  And  just 
here  transpires  one  of  the  saddest  chapters  in  human  history. 
The  machine  which  man  invented  to  relieve  him  of  labor  and 
to  produce  value  more  rapidly  has  led  to  the  factory  system  of 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT       497 

industry,  and  the  women  and  children  are  forced  to  follow  the 
work  to  the  factory.  The  machine  is  a  wonderful  expression  of 
man's  ingenuity,  of  his  effort  to  create  an  artificial  workman,  to 
whom  no  wages  have  to  be  paid,  but  it  falls  just  short  of  human 
intelligence.  It  has  no  discriminative  judgment,  no  control  of  the 
work  as  a  whole.  It  can  only  finish  the  work  handed  out  to  it,  but 
it  does  this  with  superhuman  energy.  The  manufacturer  has,  then, 
to  purchase  enough  intelligence  to  supplement  the  machine,  and 
he  secures  as  low  a  grade  of  this  as  the  nature  of  the  machine  will 
permit.  The  child,  the  immigrant,  and  the  woman  are  frequently 
adequate  to  furnish  that  oversight  and  judgment  necessary  to 
supplement  the  activity  of  the  machine,  and  the  more  ignorant 
and  necessitous  the  human  being  the  more  the  profit  to  the  in- 
dustry. But  now  comes  the  ironical  and  pitiful  part.  The  ma- 
chine which  was  invented  to  save  human  energy,  and  which  is 
so  great  a  boon  when  the  individual  controls  it,  is  a  terrible  thing 
when  it  controls  the  individual.  Power-driven,  it  has  almost  no 
limit  to  its  speed,  and  no  limit  whatever  to  its  endurance,  and  it 
has  no  nerves.  When,  therefore,  under  the  pressure  of  business 
competition  the  machine  is  speeded  up  and  the  girl  operating  it 
is  speeded  up  to  its  pace,  we  have  finally  a  situation  in  which  the 
machine  destroys  the  worker. 

Mrs.  Kelley  says  of  the  sewing  trade  :  "In  the  best  factories 
the  speed  of  the  sewing  machines  has  been  increased  so  that 
they  set,  in  1905,  twice  as  many  stitches  in  a  minute  as  they  did 
in  1899.  Machines  which  formerly  carried  one  needle  now  carry 
from  two  to  ten,  sewing  parallel  seams.  .  .  .  Thus  a  girl  using 
one  of  these  machines  is  now  responsible  for  twice  as  many 
stitches  at  the  least  and  for  twenty  times  as  many  at  the  most  as 
in  1899.  Some  girls  are  not  capable  of  the  sustained  speed  in- 
volved in  this  improvement,  and  are  no  longer  eligible  for  this 
occupation.  Those  who  continue  in  the  trade  are  required  to  feed 
twice  as  many  garments  to  the  machine  as  were  required  five 
years  ago.  The  strain  upon  their  eyes  is,  however,  far  more  than 
twice  what  it  was  before  the  improvement.  In  the  case  of  ma- 
chines carrying  multiple  needles  this  is  obvious  ;  but  it  is  true  of 
the  single-needle  machines  also.  It  is  the  duty  of  the  operator 


498  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

to  watch  the  needle  so  intently  as  to  discern  the  irregularity 
caused  by  a  broken  thread  or  broken  needle,  and  to  stop  the 
machinery  by  pressing  an  electric  button  before  any  threads  are 
cut  by  the  broken  needle  or  any  stitches  of  the  seam  are  omitted 
because  of  the  broken  thread.  Now  when  the  machine  was 
2,200  stitches  a  minute,  as  was  the  case  in  1899,  the  writer, 
whose  eyes  are  unusually  keen,  could  see  the  needle  when  the 
machine  was  in  motion.  At  the  present  speed  the  writer,  whose 
eyes  have  remained  unimpaired,  is  wholly  unable  to  see  the  needle, 
discerning  merely  the  steady  gleam  of  light  where  it  is  in  motion. 
To  meet  this  difficulty  ...  it  is  now  the  custom  to  suspend  an 
electric  light  directly  above  the  machine,  so  that  a  ray  strikes  the 
needle.  The  strain  upon  the  eyes  of  the  operators  is  almost  in- 
tolerable, and  a  further  winnowing  out  of  the  women  eligible  for 
this  occupation  follows."  When  a  girl  cannot  keep  the  pace  she  is 
thrown  out.  The  manufacturer  cannot  afford  to  keep  a  girl  at  a 
costly  machine  when  the  machine  is  not  producing  at  a  maximum 
rate.  This  would  be  to  have  a  part  of  his  plant  lying  idle.  The 
manufacturers  say  :  "If  a  girl  cannot  earn  six  dollars  a  week  at 
machine  work,  after  she  has  been  doing  it  from  six  weeks  to 
three  months,  she  is  not  adapted  to  the  work,  and  it  is  better 
to  put  another  girl  at  her  machine."  And  on  the  other  hand,  a 
comment  frequently  made  by  the  girls  is  :  "  She  got  too  slow. 
She  could  n't  keep  up  with  her  machine  any  longer."  It  amounts 
to  this,  that  the  girl  can  earn  a  living  wage,  if  she  is  unusually 
gifted,  until  she  is  worn  out. 

It  is,  I  believe,  considered  good  business  policy  in  some  cases 
to  work  a  horse  to  death,  to  wear  him  out  fast,  and  take  another. 
Certainly  it  would  be  a  good  policy  to  do  so  if  horses  had  a  very 
trifling  value  and  could  be  had  in  unlimited  quantities.  At  any 
rate  it  is  good  business  to  wear  girls  out  in  this  way,  for  the  initial 
outlay  in  their  case  is  nothing  at  all,  and  they  can  be  had  in  un- 
limited numbers.  Professor  James's  theory  of  "getting  your 
second  wind,"  and  "tapping  unused  reservoirs  of  energy"  is 
doubtless  sound  psychology,  up  to  the  point  where  he  leaves  it, 
but  there  is  a  limit  to  it,  and  evidently  working  under  great  strain 
is  advantageous  only  if  the  strain  is  relieved  by  considerable 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT  499 

intervals  of  rest  and  recuperation.  This  is  the  condition  under 
which  the  artist  works  preferably,  and  is  the  most  favorable  one 
for  creative  work.  But  the  girl  paced  by  the  machine  has  no 
considerable  interval,  and  is  doomed  to  break  down,  or  to  be 
pushed  to  a  lower  economic  level.  Her  only  other  chance  is  mar- 
riage. The  machine  is  the  most  effective  device  for  "  speeding 
up,"  because  it  puts  more  strain  on  the  worker  than  he  can  put 
on  himself  without  it,  but  in  all  "piecework"  the  operator  is 
under  heavy  strain.  There  are  factories  in  Chicago  where  the 
rate  of  pay  per  hundred  pieces  is  one  cent.  Of  course,  the  work 
passes  through  many  hands,  and  each  operation  is  simple,  but  a 
hundred  operations  of  any  kind  for  one  cent  is  a  great  deal. 
A  humane  employer  in  Chicago  recently  looked  into  the  case  of 
a  girl  who  had  quit  work  in  his  factory,  and  found  that  she  had 
been  earning  ninety-eight  cents  a  week.  And  machine  or  no 
machine,  our  treatment  of  the  working  girl,  particularly  the  fac- 
tory girl,  is  scandalously  out  of  harmony  not  only  with  our  roman- 
ticism but  with  our  plain  human  sentiments.  I  will  not  go  into 
the  budget  which  I  have  before  me  of  a  French  working  girl 
whose  annual  wage  is  $80,  nor  refer  to  the  small  earnings  of  the 
English  factory  girls  whose  wage  is  lower  than  that  in  this  country, 
and  usually  about  half  that  received  by  men  for  the  same  work. 

"  In  Perth  and  Bungay,  for  instance,  the  women  put  in  a  bill 
at  the  end  of  each  week,  worked  out  on  the  men's  scale.  The 
cashier  then  divides  the  total  by  two,  and  pays  the  women  accord- 
ingly." In  London  women  are  still  working  nineteen  hours  for 
one  shilling,  and  shirts  are  still  being  made  for  seven  and  a  half 
pence  per  dozen.  These  distressing  conditions  are  well  known, 
and  they  are  actually  a  source  of  great  concern  to  employers. 

The  employer  under  the  competitive  system  is  as  helpless  as 
the  operative.  He  does  not  profit  by  the  low  wages,  but  the  pub- 
lic, the  "innocent  bystander,"  gets  the  benefit.  The  employer  of 
the  girl  who  had  received  only  ninety-eight  cents  a  week  allowed 
the  operatives  on  a  large  contract  of  long  standing  to  run  their 
wages  up  to  $16  and  $18  a  week  (they  had  become  so  expert  in 
the  course  of  time),  with  result  that  another  firm  bid  in  the 
tract,  amounting  to  many  thousands  of  dollars  annually. 


500  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Admitting,  then,  that  conditions  are  very  bad  in  certain  of  the 
occupations  and  that  they  are  particularly  and  horribly  bad  for 
woman,  is  it  wise  for  her  to  push  out  into  this  world  ?  Is  it  not 
rather  a  world  with  which  she  should  have  nothing  to  do  except 
to  stay  out  of  it  or  get  away  from  it  as  fast  as  possible  ?  Or  ad- 
mitting that  certain  women  are  being  forced  into  work  and  even 
that  they  have  complicated  the  industrial  situation,  should  not  the 
women  of  leisure  and  social  position,  who  are  economically  pro- 
vided for,  refrain  from  entering  or  meddling  ? 

Well,  this  is  not  fundamentally  a  part  of  the  woman  question 
at  all,  except  to  the  extent  that  women  have  always  been  subject 
to  exploitation  by  men,  and  that  they  are  particularly  helpless  at 
present  because  our  traditions  and  their  training  make  them  of 
little  economic  worth  when  they  are  thrown  on  the  world.  A 
woman  has  no  safe  and  recognized  place  in  society  except  as  a 
dependent.  But  the  whole  question  is  broader  than  woman.  When 
we  come  to  examine  society  as  a  whole,  and  particularly  our 
great  industrial  centers  —  the  long  hours  and  inadequate  pay  for 
both  men  and  women,  the  sweating  system,  "  unsanitary  housing, 
poisonous  sewage,  contaminated  water,  infant  mortality,  the  spread 
of  contagion,  adulterated  food,  impure  milk,  smoke-laden  air, 
ill-ventilated  factories,  dangerous  occupations,  juvenile  crime,  un- 
wholesome crowding,  prostitution,  and  drunkenness" — we  must 
conclude  that  no  one  of  these  conditions  stands  alone,  but  all  are 
symptoms  of  a  very  bad  general  social  situation  —  that  society  has 
not  been  looked  after  in  these  points  wisely,  affectionately,  and 
honestly.  This  is  due  partly  to  greed,  partly  to  helpless  ignorance, 
and  partly  to  sheer  neglect  of  what  was  no  one's  particular  business. 

One  of  the  standard  arguments  of  those  who  believe  in  the 
low  and  essentially  unimprovable  mental  condition  of  the  savage 
is  that  he  has  no  foresight,  that  he  kills  the  emu  chicken  when  it 
weighs  only  three  pounds,  that  he  fails  to  throw  back  the  small 
fry  when  fishing,  that  with  him  it  is  either  a  feast  or  a  famine, 
and  that  in  general  he  thoughtlessly  depletes  his  environment. 
But  when  we  talk  in  this  way  we  fail  to  recognize  that  a  sense 
of  thrift,  an  ability  to  spare  and  save,  and  to  postpone  an  imme- 
diate satisfaction  for  the  sake  of  improved  conditions  in  the 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT  501 

future,  is  one  of  the  hardest  and  latest  lessons  learned  by  the 
white  race,  and  one  only  incompletely  learned  as  yet.  How  much 
game  have  we  spared  in  order  to  let  it  grow  up  ?  The  wanton 
destruction  of  game  and  wholesale  denudation  of  forests  in  this 
country  represent  heedlessness  on  a  scale  unexampled  among  the 
savages.  And  while  we  have  learned  the  lesson  of  economy  in  a 
particularistic  and  industrial  way  we  have  failed  to  develop  the 
idea  that  the  individual  has  a  social  value  which  we  cannot  afford 
to  destroy,  and  that  in  using  up  the  life  of  the  working  girl  and 
in  the  tolerance  of  an  evil  and  destructive  environment  we  are 
playing  havoc  with  our  own  property.  In  certain  of  our  great  in- 
dustrial organizations,  indeed,  the  employer  is  already  beginning 
to  recognize  that  it  is  bad  business  to  put  the  employee  under 
an  unendurable  strain.  The  engineers  on  the  eighteen-hour 
trains  of  the  Pennsylvania  road  between  Chicago  and  New  York 
work  only  ten  days  in  a  month,  and  only  reasonable  hours  on 
those  days.  The  operative  in  this  case  is  a  valuable  part  of  a 
valuable  plant,  not  easily  replaced  and  too  precious  to  be  wan- 
tonly destroyed  or  worked  out  in  the  shortest  possible  time. 

By  taking  a  temporary  and  shortsighted  advantage  of  the  nu- 
merosity,  cheapness,  and  helplessness  of  women  and  girls  we  are 
in  fact  doing  business  on  a  ruinous  principle.  I  do  not  believe 
that  anyone  in  the  world  has  a  program  that  would  immediately 
set  these  matters  right,  nor  that  any  committee  of  persons  could 
offhand  formulate  such  a  program.  The  only  way  is  to  work 
point  by  point,  by  legislation,  sentiment,  experiment,  education, 
by  the  development  of  good  will,  and  the  substitution  of  simpler 
standards  of  living  among  the  more  fortunate  classes.  And  I 
think  that  even  more  women  than  men,  entirely  uninvited  and 
often  unwelcome,  have  been  working  for  some  years  at  these 
questions,  and  they  have  displayed  a  wonderful  amount  of  energy, 
good  will,  patience,  and  ability.  As  a  matter  of  fact  that  occupa- 
tion or  rather  that  complex  of  activities  which  would  conserve 
those  interests  of  society  so  sadly  neglected  by  politics  has  been 
called  by  Miss  Addams  "civic  housekeeping."  She  says:  "A 
city  is  in  many  respects  a  great  business  corporation,  but  in  other 
respects  it  is  enlarged  housekeeping.  If  American  cities  have 


502  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

failed  in  the  first,  partly  because  officeholders  have  carried  with 
them  the  predatory  instinct  learned  in  competitive  business,  and 
cannot  help  '  working  a  good  thing,'  when  they  have  an  oppor- 
tunity, may  we  not  say  that  city  housekeeping  has  failed  partly 
because  women,  the  traditional  housekeepers,  have  not  been  con- 
sulted as  to  its  multiform  activities  ?  The  men  of  the  city 
have  been  carelessly  indifferent  to  much  of  this  civic  house- 
keeping, as  they  have  always  been  indifferent  to  the  details  of 
the  household." 

It  is  idle,  indeed,  to  speak  of  the  exclusion  of  women  from 
the  occupations.  They  are  entering  them  from  the  top  and  from 
the  bottom.  The  ill-conditioned  are  being  forced  into  them  and  the 
well-conditioned  —  those  whom  men  have  been  educating  while 
deploring  the  use  of  their  education  —  are  already  entering  them 
in  considerable  numbers  at  the  top.  And  they  are  finding  new 
and  characteristic  ways  of  giving  to  society  that  reserve  of  affec- 
tion and  nurture  which  they  have  heretofore  reserved  for  the  child 
and  the  home. 

In  the  year  1900  there  were  more  than  5,000,000  women  gain- 
fully employed  in  the  United  States  (as  against  23,753,836  men),1 
the  rate  of  increase  between  1890  and  1900  of  the  number  of 
women  so  employed  was  much  greater  than  the  corresponding 
increase  for  the  employment  of  men  (for  women  32.8  per  cent; 
for  men  21.9  per  cent),  and  the  number  of  women  gainfully 
employed  increased  more  rapidly  in  the  decade  than  the  female 
population.  So,  whether  we  wish  it  or  not,  the  old  order  is  al- 
ready changing  rapidly.  It  is  too  late  to  theorize  on  this  point. 
It  means  simply  that  the  old  idea  that  all  women  should  live  on 
the  activities  of  men  and  should  limit  their  own  interests  to  the 
bearing  and  rearing  of  children  has  gone  to  pieces. 

But  what  of  the  home  ?  Shall  the  married  woman  and  the 
mother  undertake  anything  seriously  outside  the  home  ?  Yes,  I 
think  it  is  psychologically,  if  not  economically,  necessary  that 
she  should  be  no  exception.  Let  us  for  a  moment  assume  that 
woman's  participation  in  industry  and  the  professions  is  of  no 

1  The  number  of  women  gainfully  employed  in  1910  was  8,075,772,  as  against 
30,091,564  men.  —  ED. 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT       503 

importance  from  the  economic  standpoint,  that  men  and  machines 
are  capable  of  producing  enough  wealth  for  the  family.  And  let 
us  recognize  that  from  the  human  standpoint  nature  has  been 
very  unfair  to  woman,  that  her  life  is  not  a  thing  of  her  own  but 
is  imperiously  demanded  by  the  coming  generation,  that  "bearing 
the  torch  of  life  is  a  more  important  social  function  than  nature 
has  intrusted  to  any  man,  and  that  there  is  nothing  good  enough 
for  woman  within  the  power  of  man  to  confer  on  her.  Yet  in- 
carceration within  the  home  is  the  greatest  curse  that  could  over- 
take the  nervous  system  and  the  mind  of  woman. 

The  question  is,  in  fact,  fundamentally  one  of  psychology,  and 
from  this  standpoint  there  is  no  doubt  that  our  girls  and  women 
are  viciously  treated,  or,  let  us  say,  they  are  in  a  vicious  psycho- 
logical situation,  for  nobody  bears  them  any  ill  will.  A  principle 
firmly  established  in  modern  psychology  is  that  there  can  be  no 
high  order  of  intelligence  without  a  preponderating  number  of 
voluntary  acts.  The  lower  forms  of  life  have  no  real  choice.  They 
have  habitual  reactions  to  a  somewhat  uniform  outside  world,  but 
the  outside  world  controls  them,  in  the  sense  that  they  are  obliged 
to  respond  to  all  stimulations.  The  moth  does  not  plan  to  fly 
into  the  flame,  but  it  is  drawn  in  as  the  iron  filing  is  drawn  by 
the  magnet.  It  has  no  mental  machinery  and  no  will  to  choose 
or  resist  —  and  this  we  may  call  the  fatalistic  stage  of  animal  life. 
At  the  other  end  of  the  scale,  the  human  mind  legislates  on  all 
suggestions  coming  from  without.  And  it  is  only  on  this  principle 
of  selecting  some  stimulations  and  rejecting  others,  of  sitting  still 
and  picking  and  choosing,  that  you  have  freedom  of  action,  and 
a  situation  in  which  the  individual  controls  the  outside  world 
instead  of  being  controlled  by  it. 

Now  it  is  possible  to  view  the  whole  of  human  history  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  proportion  of  willed  over  unwilled  acts,  of 
the  preponderance  of  liberty  over  authority.  The  savage  is  pop- 
ularly regarded  as  enjoying  a  state  of  freedom  and  irresponsibility, 
but  it  would  be  possible  to  show,  as  it  has  often  been  shown,  that 
he  is  the  most  unfree  person  in  the  world.  His  obligation  to  the 
customs  of  his  society,  his  magical  ideas  of  what  he  must  do  and 
what  he  may  not  do,  and  his  positive  horror  of  departure  from 


504  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  usual  are  very  nearly  absolutely  binding.  He  views  all  non- 
conformity from  the  same  standpoint  of  prejudice  and  habituation 
from  which  we  view  such  a  matter  as  carrying  food  to  the  mouth 
with  a  knife.  All  of  his  acts  have  been  socially  predetermined 
for  him.  With  the  growth  of  great  states  and  great  religious  sys- 
tems, —  with  their  absolutism,  despotism,  aristocracy,  omniscience, 
omnipotence,  predestination,  foreordination,  will  of  god,  will  of 
the  king,  will  of  the  pope,  will  of  the  priest,  will  of  the  master, 
—  we  have  the  power  of  choice  assumed  by  a  few  members  of  so- 
ciety and  negatived  and  paralyzed  in  the  minds  of  the  masses. 
The  most  attractive  formulation  of  this  practice  in  politics  was  that 
the  best  form  of  government  is  a  wise  and  benevolent  despotism, 
and  that  the  history  of  the  world  is  the  fulfilling  of  the  will  of  God. 
For  these  views  we  have  substituted  others  —  that  the  best  govern- 
ment is  a  government  of  the  people,  for  the  people,  by  the  people, 
and  that  the  history  of  the  world  is  a  record  of  the  mind  and  will 
of  man.  And  we  have  gone  so  far  as  revolutions  to  establish  these 
newer  ideals.  To  man  we  grant  a  free  personality  and  a  free 
choice,  but  to  woman  we  conceded  only  the  status  of  infancy  and 
tutelage  —  affectionate  but  psychologically  as  vicious  as  political 
or  ecclesiastical  absolutism. 

There  is  a  comfortable  side  to  the  theory  that  the  wise  and 
beneficent  ruler  will  see  that  you  suffer  nothing  in  this  world, 
on  the  sole  condition  of  your  obedience,  and  that  holy  men  will 
mediate  for  you  an  eternal  bliss  on  the  sole  condition  of  conform- 
ity to  the  will  and  doctrine  of  the  church,  and  this  sentiment  of 
attaining  the  good  for  others,  of  conferring  it  on  them  instead 
of  letting  them  work  it  out  for  themselves,  has  lived  on  in  our 
patronage  of  the  poor,  of  the  workingman  and  of  woman,  even 
after  our  formal  repudiation  of  the  principle.  But  this  attitude 
is  a  slur  on  the  mind,  and  its  persistence  in  any  form  is  an  ad- 
mission that  society  has  failed  to  provide  conditions  within  which 
the  mind  can  freely  realize  itself. 

The  ideally  wise  and  sound  choice  is  one  in  which  all  pos- 
sible alternatives  are  considered.  Any  choice,  in  fact,  involves 
the  rejection  of  all  other  possible  choices  which  present  them- 
selves, and  consequently  the  most  important  principle  in  mental 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT       505 

life  and  the  essential  to  wisdom  is  to  know  the  conditions  of  the 
world  as  completely  as  possible.  In  this  sense  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  a  private  mind.  The  mind  must  be  open  to  all  sorts  of 
intrusions  from  the  outside  world.  There  is  no  possibility  of  de- 
termining beforehand  what  information  may  go  into  the  formation 
of  a  judgment,  and  there  is  the  certainty  that  if  full  information 
is  absent  the  judgment  will  be  imperfect.  The  content  of  the 
mind  all  comes,  in  fact,  from  the  outside,  and  the  mind  must  be 
open  to  the  outside  world  in  all  possible  ways- — in  freedom  of 
motion,  in  freedom  of  conversation,  and  in  freedom  to  explore 
all  territories  —  even  the  outlawed  territory  of  sex.  It  would  be 
possible  also  to  go  back  to  the  beginning  and  show  that  the  grade 
of  mind  of  any  species  or  organism  corresponds  with  its  restricted 
or  free  power  of  exploration.  The  vegetable  which  does  not  move 
at  all  has  no  mind  at  all.  The  animal  mind,  which  is  closed  to 
all  but  the  simple  and  monotonous  stimulations  connected  with 
food  and  sex,  remains  a  simple  and  monotonous  type  of  mind. 
That  period  of  history  when  the  mind  was  not  free  to  explore 
certain  questions  is  called  the  "  dark  ages."  And  the  period  of 
democracy,  which  is  from  the  psychological  standpoint  the  period 
of  free  mental  exploration,  is  also  the  period  of  invention,  not 
alone  of  the  mechanical  invention  which  is  so  conspicuous,  but 
of  such  inventions  as  free  public  schools,  preventive  medicine, 
eugenics,  and  the  evolutionary  view  of  the  world. 

Nor  is  the  case  of  illustrious  men  who  have  withdrawn  them- 
selves from  society  and  worked  in  seclusion  an  exception  to  the 
law  that  the  mind  is  not  a  private  matter.  The  materials  of 
knowledge  are  so  vast  and  so  various  that  out  of  mere  economy 
of  attention  and  time  we  have  been  compelled  to  resort  to  spe- 
cialization, in  which  a  man  is  supposed  to  know  "something  of 
everything  and  everything  of  something."  The  specialist  is  often 
very  ill-informed  about  things  in  general,  and  our  schools  attempt 
to  anticipate  this  defect  by  supplying  him  with  a  body  of  "  cul- 
tural "  materials  before  allowing  him  to  specialize.  But  the  nar- 
rowest specialist  is  not  only  filling  in  his  consciousness  through 
experiment,  reflection,  and  classification,  but  he  lives  in  a  world 
of  books  which  are  a  short  cut  to  the  opinions  of  millions  of 


506  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

men.  He  can  virtually  converse  with  any  man,  living  or  dead, 
who  has  anything  of  importance  to  say  to  him,  by  resort  to  the 
printed  page.  And  it  is  even  an  economy  of  time  to  do  this 
through  books  rather  than  conversation. 

Mental  improvement  in  both  the  individual  and  the  race  as 
a  whole  is  closely  associated  with  the  development  of  the  occupa- 
tions. The  mind  is  a  product  of  activity,  and  the  occupations  are 
merely  a  formulation  of  activities  along  definite  and  habitual  lines. 
The  mind  of  man,  indeed,  is  not  radically  improved,  but  the 
intensive  and  unremitting  application  of  attention  by  men  to 
special  subjects  gives  in  the  aggregate  more,  and  more  varied, 
results  than  could  be  had  if  the  attention  of  all  played  loosely 
over  the  whole  field. 

The  progress  of  the  world  is  dependent  on  the  emergence  of 
what  we  call  useful  ideas,  and  these  ideas  almost  invariably 
emerge  in  connection  with  the  occupations.  We  cannot  control 
or  predict  their  appearance,  we  can  only  increase  the  number  of 
chances  of  their  appearance  by  opening  the  field  of  competition 
to  the  maximum  number  of  minds.  Such  an  idea  as  electricity 
sets  thousands  to  work  along  lines  which  they  would  otherwise 
never  have  entered,  or  gives  a  particular  and  socially  valuable 
direction  to  their  efforts.  And  thus  the  sum  of  knowledge  is 
built  up  through  those  specialized  pursuits  which  we  call  occupa- 
tional. To  exclude  women  from  the  occupations  is  therefore  not 
only  to  exclude  them  from  those  forms  of  activity  which  most 
stimulate  the  mind,  but  to  deprive  society  of  the  benefits  which 
would  follow  both  from  their  work  and  from  those  ideas  which 
they  would  thus  be  put  in  the  way  of  developing.  And  if  there 
is  any  value  in  that  variety  of  personality  which  compels  men  to 
different  fields  of  interest,  it  is  evident  that  women,  differing  from 
men  in  personality  more  than  men  differ  from  one  another,  are 
sure  to  contribute  unanticipated  results.  Their  admission  is  to 
increase  the  probability  of  the  emergence  of  genius. 

But  I  clo  not  contend  that  women  should  go  into  the  occupa- 
tions so  much  because  the  occupations  need  them,  though  that 
is  also  true,  as  because  of  the  need  women  have  of  the  occupa- 
tions. No  one  is  altogether  either  male  or  female.  The  life  of 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT       507 

men  and  women  corresponds  more  than  it  differs.  There  is  no 
mental  function  absent  in  either  sex.  The  occupations  represent 
modes  in  which  the  mind  expresses  itself.  They  are  the  moral 
field,  the  field  of  will,  of  experience,  of  practice,  and  of  concrete 
purpose.  In  this  sense  work  is  not  a  duty  but  a  right.  Society 
may  not  only  claim  service  from,  the  individual,  but  the  individual 
may  claim  the  right  to  function. 

At  present  the  strain  on  women  even  in  the  well-to-do  families 
is  intolerable.  Their  isolation,  the  triviality  of  their  interests,  and 
their  dependence  on  the  will  of  another  make  them  nervous  and 
intensely  personal,  and  merely  to  relieve  the  tension,  if  for  noth- 
ing else,  they  should  prepare  themselves  for  an  occupation  which 
they  can  practice  before  marriage,  continue  to  practice  if  they  do 
not  enter  marriage,  which  they  may  intermit  in  those  intervals 
when  the  child  is  entirely  helpless,  and  which  they  can  resume 
when  the  child  is  adult  and  departed.  Such  a  preparation  would 
not  only  overcome  their  feeling  of  dependence  but  would  tend  to 
make  their  choice  in  marriage  more  rational.  And  I  do  not  think 
the  ideals  of  eugenics  can  be  realized  until  woman  is  as  free  as 
man  in  the  choice  of  a  mate. 

Nor  would  I  give  a  very  definite  meaning  to  the  term  occupa- 
tion. There  is  no  possible  doubt  that  the  lines  containing  the 
occupations  will  continue  to  shift  and  that  the  participation  of 
women  will  continue  to  create  new  occupations.  If  the  women 
of  enforced  leisure,  for  instance,  would  shift  their  interests  from 
dress  and  fashionable  functions  and  standards,  that  would  consti- 
tute an  occupation  engaging  their  attention  for  some  years.  It  is 
even  certain  that  motherhood  will  become  one'  of  the  occupations. 
The  occupations  imply  a  preparation  and  a  purpose,  and  we  can- 
not regard  reproduction  and  the  traditional  home  life  of  women 
as  occupational,  because  mere  reproduction  is  an  organic  act,  fre- 
quently inadvertent,  and  the  traditional  home  life  has  involved  no 
adequate  preparation  for  motherhood.  We  may  fairly  set  down 
eugenic  motherhood  among  the  occupations,  but  even  then  a  part 
of  the  mother's  occupation  will  be  to  continue  her  concrete  pur- 
poses and  practices  in  the  world  at  large,  and  to  make  excursions 
from  the  home  for  the  sake  of  the  home. 


508  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

And,  after  all,  it  is  not  fair  play  to  say  that  woman's  whole 
life  is  demanded  by  the  child,  and  let  it  go  at  that.  Already  the 
nurture  of  the  child  is  carried  on  to  a  large  extent  outside  of  the 
home.  And  if  those  newer  ideals  of  the  home  and  the  sentiment 
of  eugenics  to  which  I  have  referred  are  realized,  if  the  child  is 
not  only  in  theory  but  in  practice  recognized  as  the  main  interest 
of  society,  the  family  and  society  will  more  and  more  assist  the 
mother  in  his  nurture.  We  must  remember  also  that  when 
women  are  naturally  reared  they  have  an  astonishing  amount  of 
energy.  The  records  of  savage  society  and  of  peasant  life  still 
demonstrate  this,  as  did  the  home  before  the  coming  of  the 
machine.  It  may  seem  ungracious  to  say  so,  but  we  indulge  a 
good  deal  in  what  the  rhetoricians  call  the  "  pathetic  fallacy  "  in 
connection  with  the  bearing  of  children  by  women.  Nature  has 
given  them  an  energy  and  disposition  in  proportion  to  this  very 
serious  function,  so  that  under  normal  conditions  it  may  be  classed 
among  the  pleasures,  almost  among  the  intoxications.  A  normal 
woman  can  bear  children  and  still  retain  more  energy  and  more 
tenacity  of  life  than  nature  usually  gives  to  man.  The  close  asso- 
ciation which  we  find  between  marriage  and  the  abandonment  of 
concrete  purposes  is  not  therefore  a  sacrifice  to  motherhood  but 
a  habit.  The  ordinary  woman  instantly  and  utterly  abandons  all 
occupational  preparation  or  practice  at  the  altar,  and  this  is  quite 
aside  from  the  anticipation  of  children.  And  the  university 
women  succumb  almost  as  completely.  Women  indeed  have  im- 
proved in  their  mental  attitude  toward  life  since  the  early  Vic- 
torian period  to  this  extent,  that  they  actually  make  a  preparation 
for  life,  which  they  can  use  in  case  they  do  not  accept  marriage. 
But  they  keep  only  a  wavering  eye  on  the  occupational  outlook 
as  a  makeshift  in  case  of  their  failure  to  realize  on  their  matri- 
monial anticipations.  Or  at  any  rate  when  marriage  is  proposed 
to  them  they  are  unable  to  abandon  the  traditional  view  that  mar- 
riage means  a  retirement  from  the  world  only  less  complete  than 
retirement  to  a  convent. 

Woman's  responsibility  to  the  race  may  well  be  regarded  as 
paramount,  but  it  is  not  overwhelming,  and  it  is  neither  wise  nor 
kind  to  regard  her  life  as  a  total  loss  in  all  points  but  this  single 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT  509 

one.  It  would  indeed  seem  that  opposition  to  woman's  partici- 
pation in  the  totality  of  life  is  a  romantic  subterfuge,  resting  not 
so  much  on  a  belief  in  the  disability  of  woman  as  on  the  disposi- 
tion of  man  to  appropriate  conspicuous  and  pleasurable  objects 
for  his  sole  use  and  ornamentation.  "A  little  thing,  but  all  mine 
own,"  was  one  of  the  remarks  of  Achilles  to  Agamemnon  in  their 
quarrel  over  the  two  maidens,  and  it  contains  the  secret  of  man's 
world-old  disposition  to  overlook  the  intrinsic  worth  of  woman. 


49.  THE  EFFECT  OF  SOCIETY  LIFE  AND  FASHION  UPON 
WOMEN   IN  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY1 

The  society  manner  was  an  extension  of  the  habits  acquired  by 
girls  for  the  purpose  of  their  sphere,  which  included  entertaining 
along  with  housekeeping  and  motherhood.  Objectively,  it  was 
intended  to  make  the  guest  have  a  good  time  by  putting  him  at 
ease,  and  at  the  same  time  pleasing  and  piquing  him  with  interest ; 
subjectively,  it  was  the  accepted  method  of  displaying  the  feminine 
charm,  of  giving  marriageable  girls  a  chance  to.  make  their  mar- 
ket, and  of  maintaining  the  social  status  of  the  household.  It 
therefore  demanded  a  careful  attention  to  appearances,  the  play- 
ing up  of  all  the  attractive  resources  of  the  feminine  members  of 
the  family,  and  the  concealment  of  whatever  might  not  be  credit- 
able. If  a  woman  thus  set  out  to  please  everybody,  even  within 
the  confines  of  her  own  social  circle,  she  could  never  say  what 
she  thought  nor  behave  as  she  felt.  Indeed,  the  more  charming 
she  was,  the  more  insincere  she  must  necessarily  be.  She  must 
always  be  complimentary  to  her  acquaintances,  praising  their  dress, 
belongings,  and  performances.  The  guest  who  loved  music  and 
sang  off  the  key  must  be  invited  to  perform  as  cordially  as  if 
she  were  a  really  pleasing  musician  ;  the  man  who  told  wearisome 
anecdotes  must  be  met  with  all  the  spontaneous  laughter  due  to 
wit.  The  more  tactful  the  woman  contrived  to  be,  the  more  social 
success  she  attained  and,/£T  contra,  the  more  insincere  she  became. 

1  By  Mary  R.  Coolidge.  Adapted  from  Why  Women  are  So,  pp.  103-107, 
114-117,  148-168.  Henry  Holt  and  Company,  New  York,  1912. 


510  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

It  is  evident  that  slow-witted  or  straightforward  women  would 
have  no  chance  at  all  in  a  society  where  the  coin  of  exchange 
was  mutual  and  graceful  flattery.  In  the  nature  of  things  the 
quickest-witted  women  were  the  most  capable  of  practicing  con- 
cealment of  their  thoughts,  while  those  of  more  solid  qualities 
would  either  not  be  able  to  attain  the  acrobatic  grace  necessary  to 
social  success,  or  would  have  an  honest  distaste  for  its  superfici- 
ality. The  more  intellectual  and  sincere,  and  the  more  reasonable 
a  young  woman  was,  the  less  likely  she  was  to  be  socially  suc- 
cessful, and  she  must  either  be  content  to  be  a  "  bluestocking," 
and  remain  unmarried,  or  she  must  conceal  her  natural  common- 
sense  and  imitate  the  feminine  characteristics  then  in  vogue. 

Thus  imitation  rather  than  originality  became  the  keynote  of 
women's  lives.  In  a  democratic  society  composed  largely  of 
people  born  in  the  working  classes,  whose  social  ambitions  were 
chiefly  limited  to  financial  ease  and  the  hope  of  rising  into  the 
next  higher  stratum,  there  were  many  kinds  of  men,  but  only 
two  sorts  of  women.  The  success  of  a  man  consisted  in  material 
achievement ;  of  a  woman  in  appearing  to  be  what  was  pleasing 
to  man  in  order  that  she  might  be  invited  to  share  his  height. 
Men  were  making  themselves,  so  to  speak,  of  the  genuine  stuff 
—  soft  or  hard,  fine  or  coarse-grained,  of  pine,  oak,  or  mahogany  ; 
while  women,  of  whatever  material,  must  be  carefully  veneered 
with  a  thin  and  costly  layer  of  unreality  —  a  sort  of  imitation 
composite,  a  spurious  femininity. 

It  is  certainly  significant  that,  in  proportion  as  the  women  of 
the  nineteenth  century  were  released  from  domestic,  manual  labor, 
they  become  more  and  more  extravagantly  feminine  ;  and  that 
this  phenomenon  was  a  repetition  of  what  had  previously  marked 
the  behavior  of  every  class  of  women  at  leisure  throughout  the 
world's  history.  There  is  no  evidence  that  our  manufacturing 
grandmothers  of  the  early  nineteenth  century  were  afflicted  with 
any  such  degree  of  effusive,  excitable,  unreasoning  temperament 
as  that  which  characterized  the  strictly  feminine  ideal  of  their 
immediate  descendants.  Among  Parisians  at  the  present  day, 
where  there  is  almost  no  line  drawn  between  the  economic 
sphere  of  men  and  women,  and  where  both  husband  and  wife 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT  511 

among  the  masses  must  work  to  make  a  living,  there  is  no 
marked  difference  between  them  in  respect  to  emotional  expres- 
sion. The  women  of  Paris  have  fought  as  savagely  as  men  in 
the  revolutions ;  and  French  men  are  notoriously  as  emotional  as 
the  typical  American  woman,  and  as  unreasoning  when  carried 
beyond  self-control. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  social  behavior  which  is  com- 
monly described  as  "typically  feminine"  is  an  overdevelopment 
of  characters  not  at  all  uncommon  among  men,  and  often  lacking 
in  women.  When  women  have  been  more  given  to  superficial 
talk  and  gayety  than  men,  it  is  because  men  desired  them  to  be 
so,  and  because  it  was,  therefore,  to  their  advantage.  If  they 
have  been  accustomed  to  use  hysteria  as  their  weapon  of  defense, 
instead  of  talking  reason  or  using  their  fists,  it  was  probably  be- 
cause they  had  never  had  either  encouragement  or  opportunity 
to  employ  mind  or  brute  force. 

With  the  opening  of  all  occupations  to  woman,  and  with  nearly 
equal  opportunities  for  intellectual  training,  there  has  been  devel- 
oped in  a  single  generation  a  large  number  of  American  women 
who  are  less  excitable  than  a  Frenchman,  less  sentimental  than  a 
German,  and  less  emotional  than  an  Italian  —  in  short,  almost  as 
reasonable  and  self-poised  as  the  men  of  their  own  class  and  race. 

THE  INFLUENCE  OF  DRESS  AND  FASHION 

The  ideals  of  art  and  physique,  of  beauty  and  of  dress,  had  a 
constant  reaction  upon  one  another.  The  Puritan  conception  of 
womanhood  which  dominated  this  country  till  quite  recently  was 
less  patently  sexual  than  that  of  the  older  Christian  teaching,  but, 
as  far  as  possible,  it  suppressed  romantic  love  and  the  beauty- 
loving  instinct.  While  the  natural  conditions  in  America  were 
more  favorable  and  were  producing  a  common  population  of  finer 
physique,  orthodox  religion  was  still  insisting  upon  the  "  vileness  " 
of  humanity,  the  weakness  and  ensnaring  nature  of  women,  and 
the  inevitable  connection  between  vice  and  every  form  of  art. 

The  insistence  upon  the  essential  sinfulness  of  every  natural 
instinct  which  might  have  flowered  in  art,  had  a  terrible  effect 


512  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

upon  the  minds  of  women.  It  produced  in  them  a  feeling  of 
intimate  shame.  The  body  being  vile,  all  their  functions  were 
shameful  and  to  be  concealed.  From  suppression  to  shame,  from 
shame  to  distortion,  were  logical  steps  in  the  treatment  of  their 
bodies.  The  corset,  for  instance,  worn  originally  in  Europe  as 
a  means  of  emphasizing  sex  characters  —  the  bust  and  the  hips 
—  became  the  armor  of  respectability  for  innocent  and  overmodest 
women.  To  be  seen  without  it  was  not  merely  slovenly,  it  was 
improper,  even  vulgarly  suggestive.  As  soon  as  any  young  girl 
approached  adolescence,  she  had  to  put  it  on.  Some  mothers 
said,  for  propriety's  sake ;  and  other  mothers,  that  she  might 
have  a  good  figure  when  she  grew  to  womanhood.  That  is  to 
say,  she  must  develop  the  small  waist,  and  the  large  hips  and 
bust,  like  a  French  fashion  plate,  in  order  to  meet  the  require- 
ments of  Puritan  modesty.  No  better  illustration  could  be  found 
of  the  conflicting  traditions  which  ignorant  women  were  blindly 
following. 

Without  attempting  to  account  for  the  vagaries  of  modesty  — 
a  subject  upon  which  much  has  already  been  written  —  the  effect 
of  a  single  convention  upon  the  health  and  beauty  of  women  may 
be  dwelt  upon.  Throughout  the  past  century,  to  be  obviously 
two-legged  was  to  be  immodest.  The  Chinese  woman  —  as 
modest  and  feminine  as  any  of  her  sex  in  the  world,  perhaps  — 
has  had  the  use  of  her  legs,  if  not  of  her  feet,  for  thousands  of 
years,  but  the  American  woman  has  always  had  to  pretend  that 
she  had  only  one.  The  peasant  woman  of  northern  Europe, 
though  burdened  with  heavy  petticoats,  might  exhibit  her  body 
below  the  knee,  but  the  "  free  "  woman  of  the  new  democracy 
had  to  conceal,  as  far  as  possible,  even  her  ankles. 

This  convention  restricted  every  activity,  and  was,  unquestion- 
ably, one  of  the  factors  in  the  deterioration  of  the  health  of 
American  women.  For  three  hundred  years  western  women  have 
ridden  on  horseback  sidewise,  with  feet  enveloped  in  a  volumi- 
nous skirt,  solely  because  a  French  Princess  long  ago  set  the 
fashion  to  conceal  her  own  deformed  spine.  Because  the  roues 
of  a  decadent  society  attached  sexual  significance  to  ankles,  the 
American  girl  walked  encased  in  heavy  drapery,  which  compelled 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT  513 

a  narrow,  uncertain  tread.  Millions  of  women  lifted  their  petti- 
coats billions  of  times  in  the  course  of  their  lives ;  while  house- 
wives scoured  their  floors,  hampered  by  the  uniform  of  their  sex, 
and  endangered  their  lives  whenever  they  got  in  or  out  of  a 
vehicle  ;  all  for  no  other  reason  than  that  the  particular  form  of 
modesty  inculcated  by  Puritan  society  had  tabooed  legs  in  women. 
The  early  advocates  of  Women's  Rights  were  right,  if  not  wise, 
in  associating  a  bifurcated  costume  with  equality  and  freedom, 
but  it  was  equally  necessary  to  the  production  of  true  beauty. 

Shame  and  inactivity,  thus  linked  together,  produced  a  strangely 
distorted  and  bloodless  creature  whose  only  sign  of  real  loveliness 
was  a  pretty  face.  The  grace  of  symmetry  and  the  exhilaration 
of  free  motion  were  denied  not  only  to  women  of  the  leisure 
classes,  but  to  working  women  as  well,  because  every  woman  in 
America  was  trying  "to  be  a  lady,"  and  the  conventions  of  the 
Foretime  had  so  ordained.  Even  when  the  Puritan  regime 
declined  and  women  were  beginning  to  be  released  from  the 
older  conventions,  they  were  at  the  same  time  presented  with  a 
vicious  foreign  model  by  the  vogue  of  fashions  which  had  been 
brought  in  to  promote  journalism  and  manufacture. 

Ever  since  the  Civil  War  the  amount  of  time  and  expense  put 
upon  dress  by  women  in  this  country  has  been  increasing,  until 
now  it  has  become  the  chief  occupation  and  the  accepted  amuse- 
ment of  a  very  large  number  of  those  above  the  laboring  class. 
It  has  been  generally  assumed  that  this  is  due  to  some  inherent 
personal  taste  on  the  part  of  women  ;  but  it  is  a  matter  of  eco- 
nomic history  that  dress  as  a  pursuit  has  been  the  result  of  the 
development  of  manufacture  and  of  modern  methods  of  trade 
promotion  rather  than  of  an  innate  frivolity,  to  which  leisure 
and  idleness  have  always  contributed. 

When  we  visualize  the  typical  jeweler,  deft-handed,  short- 
sighted, and  stoop-shouldered  ;  or  the  dry-goods  clerk,  radiating 
smiles  and  ladylike  manners  ;  or  the  politician,  swollen  with 
self-confidence  and  overeating ;  we  do  not  assume  that  he  could 
never  have  been  any  other  sort  of  man,  even  though  his  natural 
temperament  may  have  dictated  his  choice  of  occupation.  It  is 
taken  for  granted  in  explaining  such  men  that  their  ambitions  in 


514  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

life  have  been  molded  by  their  environment  to  produce  certain 
types  of  physique  and  character.  It  is  a  matter  of  common  ex- 
perience that  there  are  very  few  human  beings  so  specialized  by 
their  hereditary  qualities  that  they  could  not  have  been  different 
had  they  been  born  in  another  environment  than  the  one  in 
which  we  see  them.  When  they  are  so  specialized  they  are  called 
eccentrics,  and  sometimes  recognized  as  having  genius. 

One  has  only  to  observe  the  modifications  of  character  and 
habits  which  take  place  in  men  who  change  from  one  industrial 
medium  to  another  requiring  very  different  qualifications,  to  infer 
that  women  of  the  same  breed  might  show  unexpected  variations 
if  their  environment  were  as  varied  and  as  stimulating.  The 
effect  of  social  surroundings  in  developing  in  women  an  inordi- 
nate love  of  adornment  can  be  best  measured,  perhaps,  by  contem- 
plating other  and  rather  unusual  types  produced  by  exceptional 
circumstances.  During  the  past  century,  wherever  a  girl,  by  force 
of  circumstance  or  natural  hatred  of  physical  restraint,  refused  to 
submit  to  the  tyranny  of  dress,  she  became  almost  invariably  and, 
it  might  almost  be  said,  by  virtue  thereof,  a  superior  human 
being.  The  wives  of  the  California  pioneers,  brought  up  like 
other  Eastern  girls  to  give  the  utmost  care  to  their  dress,  when 
transplanted  to  isolated  homes  on  ranches  and  in  mining  camps, 
without  servants,  and  often  compelled  to  do  the  labor  of  a  large 
household,  while  rearing  their  families,  almost  always  emancipated 
their  bodies  from  the  trammels  of  long  skirts  and  from  corsets. 
Utility  and  cleanliness  became  the  sole  requisites  of  their  clothing, 
and  thus  was  released  a  vast  amount  of  physical  and  mental 
energy  to  be  spent  in  other  and  worthier  directions.  They 
managed  complicated  households,  reared  vigorous  children,  in 
emergencies  guarded  water  rights  and  mining  properties  with  a 
shotgun  ;  and  in  their  old  age  were  as  fearless,  as  able-bodied,  as 
warm-hearted,  and  as  capable  as  their  partners. 

The  influence  of  the  Quaker  costume  and  plain  traditions  in 
minimizing  feminine  and  developing  larger  human  qualities  in 
women  is  registered  in  the  women's  rights  movement,  in  which 
the  Friends  played  so  large  a  part  between  1840  and  1870. 
Lucretia  Mott,  the  Quaker  preacher,  an  exquisite,  gentle,  frail, 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT  515 

and  yet  brilliant  woman,  was  doubtless  the  most  important  figure 
among  all  the  delegates  to  the  World's  Anti- Slavery  Convention 
in  London.  Clothes  were  the  least  of  all  concerns  to  her,  we 
may  infer,  for  she  wrote  of  herself : 

My  life,  in  the  domestic  sphere,  has  passed  much  as  that  of  other  wives  and 
mothers  in  this  country.  I  have  had  six  children.  Not  accustomed  to  resigning 
them  to  the  care  of  a  nurse,  I  was  much  confined  to  them  during  their  infancy 
and  childhood.  Being  fond  of  reading,  I  omitted  much  unnecessary  stitching 
and  ornamental  work  in  the  sewing  for  my  family,  so  that  I  might  have  time 
for  this  indulgence  and  for  the  improvement  of  the  mind.  For  novels  and 
light  reading  I  never  had  much  taste.  The  "  Ladies'  Department "  in  the 
periodicals  of  the  day  had  no  attraction  for  me. 

By  dwelling  on  such  exceptional  women,  it  may  be  possible  to 
conceive  what  the  effect  of  ornamentation  as  a  principle  aim  in 
life  has  been  upon  the  greater  number  of  average  young  girls 
brought  up  in  middle-class  homes.  To  them  dress  involved  a 
constant  consideration  of  money  —  how  to  get  it  without  directly 
entering  the  wage-earning  class,  how  far  it  might  be  made  to  go, 
and  even  how  things  might  be  got  without  it.  Money  has  rarely 
been  looked  at  in  the  large  by  women  as  income  or  capital,  but 
rather  as  a  succession  of  petty,  irregular  sums  to  be  spread  over 
a  thousand  necessities  and  luxuries.  Because  the  husband  and 
father  was  the  earning  partner  he  was  inevitably  the  financial 
head,  paying  the  larger  household  expenses  himself,  and  handing 
out  to  the  wife  and  minor  children  for  their  clothing  and  inciden- 
tals such  generous  or  niggardly  pin  money  as  his  temperament 
and  means  dictated.  The  effect  upon  women  was  similar  to  that 
of  an  irregular  wage  upon  the  casual  workingman  ;  there  was  no 
incentive  to  thrift,  but  every  inducement  to  shortsighted  and  petty 
extravagance.  There  was  never  butter  to  cover  a  whole  slice  of 
bread,  therefore  why  trouble  about  butter  at  all  ?  —  why  not  have 
a  string  of  imitation  pearls  ?  —  so  women  naturally  reasoned. 
Expenditure  dribbled  along  on  the  hand-to-mouth  principle :  a 
girl  might  need  hat,  shoes,  underwear,  all  at  once,  but,  as  the 
sum  given  her  at  any  one  time  was  never  enough  to  cover 
them  all,  she  naturally  bought  the  hat  first,  the  shoes  next,  and 
postponed  the  underwear,  making  the  best  appearance  she  could. 


516  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

A  constantly  rising  scale  of  dress  accessories  often  cut  off  — 
among  poorer  girls  —  garments,  and  even  food,  necessary  to 
health. 

It  is  evident  enough  without  further  illustration  that,  because 
women  did  not  earn  their  money,  and  received  it  irregularly  in 
small  amounts,  they  had  no  occasion  to  develop  a  balanced  finan- 
cial sense ;  but  acquired,  on  the  one  hand,  a  wonderful  skill  in 
spreading  petty  amounts  thinly  over  large  areas,  and,  on  the 
other,  a  perverted  judgment  of  values.  If  this  had  produced  in 
them  only  a  petty  thrift  and  foolish  expenditure,  the  remedy 
would  be  obvious  and  easy ;  but  it  has,  in  truth,  eaten  into 
character  much  more  deeply.  For  the  love  of  dress  and  the  ne- 
cessity of  satisfying  it  by  getting  it  from  some  man  who  earned  it, 
made  girls  from  their  childhood  contrive,  deceive,  and  maneuver. 
It  is  a  common  enough  joke  that  men  are  better-humored  after 
dinner  than  before,  but  among  women  it  is  a  commonplace  quite 
without  any  humorous  color.  Every  dependent  creature,  whether 
woman  or  child,  peon  or  dog,  as  a  matter  of  safety  or  comfort, 
learns  to  read  the  temper  of  his  master ;  and  in  proportion  as 
he  is  able  to  play  upon  it,  finds  life  easier.  Wheedling  and 
cunning,  the  whole  battery  of  feminine  weapons  from  caresses  to 
tears  and  temper,  were  inevitably  employed  upon  negligent  and 
selfish  men  by  their  dependents ;  and  often  to  the  extent  of 
imposition  upon  generous  men. 

The  stylish  woman  had  forever  to  pursue  that  will-o'-the-wisp 
of  fashion,  "  the  newest  thing,"  not  only  in  boots,  stockings, 
lingerie,  dresses,  and  hats,  but  also  the  latest-uttermost-refinement- 
of-the-newest-thing  in  braids,  lace,  embroidery,  beads,  passemen- 
terie, trimmings,  of  which  there  were  hundreds  of  designs  rapidly 
succeeding  each  other.  There  were,  besides,  an  infinitude  of 
shades,  widths,  textile  surfaces,  in  an  ever-enlarging  variety  of 
stuffs  ;  and  these  had  to  be  combined  by  herself  or  the  dress- 
maker, after  consultation  of  several  American  and  French  fashion 
books,  in  the  momentarily  approved  design.  And  all  this  energy 
was  expended  without  hope  of  anything  more  than  temporary 
success,  except  for  those  who  could  make  over  or  replace  the 
garment  to  meet  the  next  incoming  fashion. 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT       517 

The  making  over  of  clothes  every  year,  if  not  every  six  months, 
as  the  pace  of  fashion  speeded  up,  came  to  take  the  place  of 
many  of  those  spurious  handicrafts  with  which  the  clever  woman 
of  the  mid-century  had  been  wont  to  busy  her  hands.  It  became 
a  matter  of  pride  with  those  of  small  means  to  "  make  something 
out  of  nothing,"  as  the  complimentary  phrase  went  —  to  contrive 
a  new  and  stylish  dress  out  of  two  old  ones ;  to  conceal  paucity 
of  material  by  piecing  small  bits  of  cloth  together,  and  decorating 
the  tell-tale  seams ;  to  make  a  jacket  of  a  man's  discarded  over- 
coat, lined  with  the  less-worn  portions  of  an  old  silk  petticoat. 
As  the  rule  of  fashion  spread  to  carpets,  curtains,  bedding,  and 
furniture,  the  inexorable  principle  of  multiplying  designs  to  stim- 
ulate buying,  invaded  this  field  as  well ;  and  the  devoted  house- 
wife, according  to  her  means  and  her  ingenuity,  conscientiously 
set  herself  the  duty  of  keeping  her  house  as  well  as  herself  and 
children  "  in  the  fashion."  In  all  this  she  exercised  her  brain 
as  much  as  her  manufacturing  grandmother  had  done  before  her, 
but  with  infinitely  less  of  real  value  to  show  for  it. 

Perhaps  all  the  more  because  the  result  did  not  command 
satisfactory  appreciation  from  her  men-folk,  whose  crude  tastes 
and  practical  turn  of  mind  did  not  readily  grasp  the  desperate 
need  of  women  to  be  in  the  fashion,  she  required  the  approval 
of  other  womankind.  So  much  struggle  and  economy  must  be 
worthy  of  recognition  ;  and  if,  unhappily,  her  men  friends  did  not 
notice  and  praise  the  triumphs  of  her  ingenious  —  and  often 
wasted  —  skill,  she  turned  to  other  women  to  secure  their  proper 
appraisal.  It  is  no  doubt  true  that  women  competing  in  the 
dress  contest  are  often  jealous  of  each  other,  but  it  is  far  more 
significant  that  they  have  devised  a  code  of  manners  with  which 
to  satisfy  each  other's  hunger  for  appreciation.  Each  agrees  to 
admire,  or,  at  any  rate,  to  appear  to  admire,  the  other's  dress. 
When  two  women  meet,  it  is  customary,  after  the  conventional 
greeting,  for  one  to  say  :  "  How  pretty  your  new  hat  is  1  "  And 
for  the  other  to  reply  :  "  I  'm  so  glad  you  like  it —  I  saw  the  new 
shape  at  Smith's  Emporium,  and  I  trimmed  it  with  the  velvet 
off  my  last  winter's  hat."  When  this  topic  has  been  canvassed 
to  the  satisfaction  of  the  wearer  of  the  hat,  she  in  turn  will 


518  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

compliment  her  friend's  taste  and  ingenuity  by  praising  some- 
thing she  is  wearing.  In  such  wise  have  women  expended  their 
perverted  abilities  and  kindliness,  spurred  on  by  the  race  of  com- 
mercial fashion,  and  lacking  an  education  in  larger  things. 

Dress,  moreover,  came  to  take  the  place  of  healthful  exercise 
and  recreation.  The  lazy  afternoon  parade  through  the  shopping 
streets,  to  see  the  newest  fashions  displayed  four  times  a  year  at 
the  change  of  seasons,  became  a  weekly  excursion  as  the  varieties 
of  materials  and  style  increased.  And  in  our  day  many  women 
of  small  means  know  scarcely  any  other  way  of  spending  their 
leisure  except  to  drag  a  fretful  child  past  the  shop  windows  every 
week-day  afternoon,  and  then  to  go  home  and  try  to  copy  the 
most  violent  combinations  of  color  and  the  most  striking  designs 
in  sleazy,  cheap  imitations. 

It  is  a  trite  old  saying  that  a  man  with  a  champagne  taste  and 
a  beer  income  is  sure  of  trouble.  In  women  a  similar  desire  for 
display,  gratified  at  the  cost  of  the  earning  power  of  which  they 
themselves  have  no  direct  experience,  is  equally  disastrous  in 
producing  effeminacy  and  discontent.  The  capacity  for  detail 
developed  through  a  thousand  generations  of  domestic  necessity 
has  been  turned  into  a  few  narrow  channels,  the  chief  of  which 
has  at  last  come  to  be  the  pursuit  of  dress.  Their  age-long 
economy  has  become  shortsighted  pinching  in  some,  and  equally 
ill-judged  extravagance  in  others.  And  the  constant  chase  after 
fashions  which  no  amount  of  money  would  enable  them  really  to 
come  up  with  has  produced  a  state  of  chronic  dissatisfaction  with 
themselves,  their  lot,  and  with  the  men  who  supply  their  income. 
Petty-mindedness  has  at  last  become  the  distinguishing  character- 
istic of  the  average  woman.  The  marvelous  thrift  which  enables 
her  to  dress  stylishly  on  a  small  sum  ;  the  originality  with  which 
she  contrives  and  imitates  ever-new  prettinesses  ;  the  ingenuity 
with  which  she  makes  a  good  show  on  small  resources  —  all  these 
valuable  but  perverted  qualities  would,  if  applied  to  the  larger 
problems  of  common  life,  clean  up  the  cities,  find  a  home  for 
every  normal  child,  and  reform  our  haphazard  domestic  economy ; 
and  would  produce  that  sureness  of  aim,  that  sense  of  being  a 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT  519 

useful  cog  in  the  world's  machinery,  without  which  no  human 
being  can  be  happy. 

The  female  mind,  thus  fed  on  details  of  ephemeral  importance, 
had  no  reason  for  larger  intellectual  interests ;  and  constant  occu- 
pation with  the  attainment  of  the  correct  accessories  of  her  cos- 
tume left  little  leisure  for  reading.  Such  books  as  she  found  time 
for  would  naturally  be  of  the  emasculated  sort,  whose  heroines 
were  the  beautiful  and  perfectly  dressed  kind  she  strove  to  be ; 
to  whom  impossible,  but  perfectly  moral,  adventures  happened, 
until  they  culminated  in  a  blissful  engagement.  For  a  quarter  of 
a  century  at  least,  the  Sunday-school  novel  and  magazines  of  the 
type  of  Godey's  Lady  s  Book  supplied  the  mental  pabulum  of 
the  majority  of  American  women.  The  magazines  inculcated  the 
pursuit  of  dress  as  a  most  important  duty  of  woman  as  part  of 
the  ideal  of  gentility  and  religion  set  before  the  perfect  lady. 

And  if  it  be  thought  that  women  no  longer  feed  on  this 
anaemic  literary  diet,  one  has  only  to  examine  any  one  of  the 
strictly  feminine  journals  to  learn  how  pervasive  it  still  is.  Many 
of  them  profit  by,  if  they  are  not  published  in,  the  interest  of 
trade  and  manufactures  for  women,  and  it  is  highly  important  to 
them  that  the  love  of  dress  should  be  intensified. 

Since  the  days  of  the  forties,  when  French  fashion  plates  were 
successfully  introduced,  this  sort  of  literature  has  been  served  up 
to  make  women  buy  new,  and  always  more  fantastic,  clothing. 
It  requires  no  great  acumen  to  conclude  that  it  would  inevitably 
lead  to  extravagance.  Having  no  responsibility  for  earning  their 
own  money  —  though  indirectly  they  might,  nevertheless,  earn  it 
—  and  very  little  experience  in  handling  it,  except  in  small 
amounts,  they  did  not  reckon  its  value  in  the  large.  And  having 
been  encouraged  to  concentrate  their  energies  on  appearance,  they 
came  to  have  a  highly  cultivated  taste  —  nay,  more  than  taste, 
appetite  —  for  pretty  clothes  which,  like  an  appetite  for  drink  or 
games  of  chance,  must  be  satisfied.  Yet  it,  like  many  another 
social  habit,  could  never  be  satisfied.  It  might  also  be  said  that 
the  more  time  and  money  they  had  to  give  to  dress,  the  more 
discontented  they  were  sure  to  be.  If  the  father  or  husband 


520  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

could  not  meet  this  rising  demand,  they  pitied  themselves  for  his 
lack  of  success ;  if  he  set  a  limit  of  expenditure,  they  regarded 
him  as  a  selfish  brute.  Now  and  then  they  degenerated  into 
dishonest  schemers,  running  up  large  bills  for  which  their  men- 
kind  were  responsible  ;  cheating  the  dressmaker  and  the  milliner ; 
sending  back  garments  as  unsatisfactory  after  wearing  them ; 
practicing  the  deceits  of  the  adventuress  in  the  guise  of  a 
respectable  woman  of  society. 

Yet,  in  justice  to  womankind,  it  must  be  granted  that  the 
dress  mania  produced  very  few  of  these  types,  as  compared  with 
hundreds  of  conscientious,  economical  women,  who,  misled  by  the 
conventions  of  their  social  station,  took  out  of  themselves,  rather 
than  out  of  men's  pockets,  the  wherewithal  to  achieve  the  proper 
clothes  of  a  lady.  These  dear,  fussy,  dutiful  creatures  sacrificed 
their  health,  their  love  of  nature,  their  taste  for  art,  for  litera- 
ture, even  their  companionableness,  to  the  Juggernaut  of  women 
—  Suitability.  Moreover,  because  men  were  conspicuously  the 
producing  class,  and  women  for  the  most  part  obviously  the  con- 
sumers,  extravagance  came  to  be  regarded  as  a  female  propensity ; 
while,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  was  no  more  truly  characteristic  of 
one  than  of  the  other.  What  men  spent  in  cigars  and  tobacco, 
in  heavy  eating  and  drinking,  in  club  life  and  dues,  and  in  care- 
less, unconsidered  sums,  women  balanced  by  their  equally  wasteful 
but  careful  spreading  of  small  sums  upon  the  elaboration  of  dress. 

One  of  the  last  and  most  demoralizing  aspects  of  fashion- 
promotion  has  been  the  infliction  upon  children  of  the  over- 
developed taste  for  tawdry  ornament.  The  women's  magazines 
cater  to  the  mother's  pride  by  providing  embroidery  patterns  to 
be  worked  upon  little  boys'  blouses  ;  suggestions  of  how  to  cut 
over  little  girls'  dresses  to  keep  pace  with  the  newest  idea.  While 
the  laundry  bills  mount  ever  higher,  the  fashionable  little  girl  is 
rigged  out  in  more  fragile  and  impracticable  and  unwholesome 
clothing.  It  is  as  if  the  mother  were  still  a  child  herself,  playing 
with  a  live  doll  which,  though  it  cannot  be  broken,  may  still  be 
distorted  into  her  own  foolish  image. 

As  a  result  of  the  combined  influence  of  economic  forces  and 
social  traditions,  centering  in  dress,  women  have  acquired  a  set 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT  521 

of  habits  of  expenditure  and  thinking  which  lead  to  discontent 
and  waste  of  time  in  the  trivialities  of  taste,  in  the  pursuit  of 
petty  economies,  and  in  the  discussion  of  dress  detail.  These 
are,  however,  the  least  of  the  evil  effects  of  the  dress  cult :  in 
many  women  they  degenerate  into  exploitation  of  men,  dishonesty 
toward  tradespeople,  and  the  vulgarities  of  conspicuous  display. 
It  may  almost  be  asserted  that  competence,  good  humor,  and  intel- 
ligence in  women  are  now  in  inverse  proportion  to  the  amount 
of  time  they  spend  on  the  fashion  of  their  clothes.  A  woman  of 
influence  and  a  "  real  lady  "  in  the  twentieth  century  is  known, 
more  often  than  not,  by  the  fact  that  she  is  not  dressed  conspic- 
uously in  the  latest  fashion.  She  may  be  known  even  more  by 
the  fact  that  her  children  are  dressed  in  the  simplest  and  most 
childlike  manner. 

50.    HOW  HOME  CONDITIONS  REACT  UPON  THE  FAMILY1 

Discussion  of  social  processes,  to  be  fruitful,  must  rest  on  some 
hypothesis  as  to  the  nature  and  purpose  of  society.  It  is  here 
assumed  that  society  is  a  life-form  in  course  of  evolution,  that  its 
processes  are  to  be  measured  like  those  of  other  life-forms,  as 
they  affect  the  three  main  issues  of  e'xistence  —  being,  repro- 
duction, improvement. 

In  so  far  as  social  processes  are  genetic  they  interest  us  as 
students  and  critics ;  in  so  far  as  they  are  telic  they  form  the 
most  practical  and  important  subjects  of  study.  The  family  has 
its  origin  in  the  genetic  process  of  reproduction  ;  but  is  modified 
continually  by  telic  forces.  In  its  present  form  it  is  an  institution 
of  confused  values,  based  on  vital  necessity,  but  heavily  encum- 
bered with  rudiments  of  earlier  stages  of  development,  some 
beneficent,  some  useless,  some  utterly  mischievous  ;  and  showing 
also  the  thriving  growth  of  new  and  admirable  features. 

We  must  consider  it  first  on  its  biological  basis,  as  a  sex-related 
group  for  the  purpose  of  rearing  young ;  and  the  effect  of  con- 
ditions upon  it  should  be  measured  primarily  by  this  purpose. 

1  By  Charlotte  Perkins  Oilman.  From  Publications  of  the  American  Sociologi- 
cal Society,  Vol.  Ill  (1908),  pp.  16-29. 


522  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Next  we  find  in  the  existing  family  clear  traces  of  that  early 
long-dominant  social  unit,  the  woman-centered  group  of  the 
matriarchate.  Our  universal  and  deep-seated  reverence  for  the 
mother-governed  home,  with  its  peace,  comfort,  order,  and  good 
will,  has  survived  many  thousand  years  of  patriarchal  govern- 
ment, and  refuses  to  be  changed  even  by  innumerable  instances 
of  discomfort,  discord,  waste,  and  unhappiness. 

Superimposed  upon  this  first  social  group  comes  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  patriarchate,  the  family  with  the  male  head,  based 
upon  the  assumption  by  the  male  of  sole  efficiency  as  transmitter 
of  life.  In  this  form  the  family  enters  upon  an  entirely  new 
phase,  and  includes  purposes  hitherto  unknown.  It  becomes  a 
vehicle  of  masculine  power  and  pride  —  was  indeed  for  long  their 
sole  vehicle :  it  produces  its  ethics,  its  codes  of  honor,  its  series 
of  religions,  its  line  of  political  development  through  tribe  and 
clan,  princedom  and  monarchy,  its  legal  system  in  which  all 
personal  and  property  rights  are  vested  in  the  man,  and  its 
physical  expression  in  the  household  of  servile  women.  It  is 
from  this  period  that  we  derive  our  popular  impressions  that  the 
family  is  the  unit  of  the  state,  that  the  man  is  the  head  of  the 
house,  and  other  supposedly  self-evident  propositions.  The  patri- 
archal family,  even  in  its  present  reduced  and  modified  form,  is 
the  vital  core  and  continuing  cause  of  our  androcentric  culture. 

Fourthly,  we  must  view  it  as  an  industrial  group  of  self- 
centered  economic  activities,  the  birthplace  of  arts  and  crafts  as 
well  as  of  persons.  While  the  natural  origin  of  these  industries 
is  in  maternal  energy,  the  voluntary  efforts  of  the  mother  being 
the  real  source  of  human  production,  yet  the  family,  as  an  eco- 
nomic group  in  the  modern  sense,  is  also  an  androcentric  institu- 
tion. Besides  the  mother's  work  for  her  children,  the  patriarchal 
family  required  the  service  of  the  man  by  his  women  —  a  claim 
which  has  no  parallel  in  nature. 

There  is  nothing  in  maternity,  nothing  in  the  natural  relation 
of  the  sexes  which  should  make  the  female  the  servant  of  the 
male.  This  form  of  economic  relationship  was  developed  when 
the  man  learned  to  take  advantage  of  the  industrial  value  of  the 
woman  and  added  to  his  profitable  group  as  many  women  as 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN   MOVEMENT  523 

possible.  Moreover,  when  the  masculine  instinct  of  sex-combat 
swelled  and  broadened,  blended  with  the  hunter's  predatory  appe- 
tite, organized,  and  became  war,  then  in  course  of  time  male 
captives  were  compelled  to  labor  as  the  price  of  life,  and  set  to 
work  in  the  only  social  group  then  existent.  It  is  to  this  custom, 
to  this  remote  and  painful  period,  that  our  institution  owes 
its  present  name.  Not  father,  mother,  nor  child,  but  servant, 
christens  the  family. 

Further  than  this  we  find  in  our  family  group  the  develop- 
ment of  a  new  relation,  a  new  idea  as  yet  but  little  understood, 
that  which  is  vaguely  expressed  by  the  word  marriage.  Monog- 
amy, the  permanent  union  of  one  male  and  one  female  for  repro- 
ductive purposes,  is  as  natural  a  form  of  sex-relation  as  any 
other,  common  to  many  animals  and  birds,  a  resultant  of  con- 
tinued and  combined  activities  of  both  parents  for  the  same  end. 
This  natural  base  of  a  true  marriage  should  be  carefully  studied. 
Continued  union  in  activity  for  a  common  purpose  necessarily 
develops  ease  and  pleasure  in  the  relationship.  The  same  couple 
can  carry  on  these  activities  more  easily  than  a  new  combination; 
hence  monogamy. 

In  our  human  family  we  find  many  forms  :  androgyny,  polyg- 
yny, and  then  the  slow  and  halting  evolution  of  monogyny. 
Monogynous  marriage  should  include  sex-attraction,  romantic 
love,  and  a  high  degree  of  comradeship.  It  is  now  our  common 
race  ideal,  recognized  as  best  for  the  advantage  of  the  child  and 
the  individual  happiness  of  the  parent ;  also,  through  greater 
personal  efficiency,  for  the  good  of  society.  This  form  of  mar- 
riage is  slowly  evolving  in  the  family,  but  is  by  no  means 
invariably  present. 

Lastly  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  the  family  is  our  accepted 
basis  of  mere  living  ;  it,  and  its  outward  expression,  the  home, 
are  so  universally  assumed  to  be  the  only  natural  form  of  exist- 
ence, that  to  continue  on  earth  outside  of  "a  family,"  without 
"  a  home,"  is  considered  unnatural  and  almost  immoral.  In  this 
regard  the  family  must  be  studied  as  ministering  to  the  health, 
comfort,  happiness,  and  efficiency  of  adult  individuals,  quite  aside 
from  parental  purposes,  or  those  of  marriage  ;  as  for  instance 


524  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

in  the  position  of  adult  sons  and  daughters,  of  aged  persons 
no  longer  actively  valuable  as  parents ;  or  of  coadjacent  aunts, 
uncles,  and  cousins  ;  as  also  in  relation  to  the  purely  individual 
interests  of  members  of  the  family  proper. 

When  we  now  take  up  our  study  of  home  conditions,  we  have 
definite  ground  from  which  to  judge  and  to  measure  them.  How 
do  they  react  upon  the  family  in  regard  to  those  three  major 
purposes  of  life  —  being,  reproduction,  improvement  ?  Do  they 
best  maintain  human  life  ?  Do  they  best  minister  to  the  repro- 
duction of  the  species  ?  And  to  the  evolution  of  monogyny  ? 
Above  all  do  they  tend  to  race  improvement  ? 

Mere  existence  is  no  justification,  else  might  we  all  remain 
Archaean  rocks.  Reproduction  is  not  sufficient,  else  the  fertile 
bacterium  would  be  our  ideal.  All  social  institutions  must  be 
measured  as  they  tend  not  only  to  maintain  and  reproduce,  but 
to  improve  humanity.  We  will  make  brief  mention  of  our  essen- 
tial home  conditions  and  examine  their  reaction  on  the  family  as 
touching  (a)  marriage,  (b)  parentage,  (r)  child-culture,  (d}  the 
individual  and  social  progress.  What  are  our  essential  home 
conditions  ? 

Here  we  are  confronted  with  so  vast  and  tumultuous  a  sea  of 
facts  —  noisy,  painful,  prominent  facts  —  that  proper  perspective 
is  difficult  to  obtain.  Here  we  are  confronted  also  with  the  most 
sensitive,  powerful,  universal,  and  ancient  group  of  emotions 
known  to  man.  This  complex  of  feelings,  tangled  and  knotted  by 
ages  of  iron-bound  association ;  fired  with  the  quenchless  vitality 
of  the  biological  necessities  on  which  they  rest ;  intensified  by 
all  our  conscious  centuries  of  social  history ;  hallowed,  sanctified, 
made  imperative  by  recurrent  religions  ;  enforced  with  cruel  penal- 
ties by  law,  and  crueller  ones  by  custom ;  first  established  by  those 
riotous  absurdities  of  dawning  ethics,  the  sex-tabus  of  the  primi- 
tive savage,  and  growing  as  a  cult  down  all  our  ages  of  literature 
and  art ;  the  emotions,  sentiments,  traditions,  race-habits,  and 
fixed  ideas  which  center  in  the  home  and  family  —  form  the 
most  formidable  obstacle  to  clear  thought  and  wise  conclusion. 

Forced  by  increasing  instances  of  discontent,  inefficiency,  and 
protest  within  the  group,  we  are  beginning  to  make  some  study 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT  525 

of  domestic  conditions  ;  but  so  far  this  study  has  been  on  the  one 
hand  superficial ;  and  on  the  other  either  starkly  reactionary  or 
merely  rebellious. 

The  first  home  conditions  forced  upon  our  consideration  are 
the  material.  Here  we  note  most  prominently  the  effects  of 
economic  pressure  in  our  cities ;  the  physical  restriction  of  the 
home  in  the  block,  the  tenement,  the  apartment  house  ;  the  dev- 
astating effects  of  the  sweatshop ;  the  tendency  toward  what  we 
call  "  cooperative  housekeeping." 

As  far  as  mere  physical  crowding  is  a  home  condition  we  may 
find  that  as  far  back  as  the  cliff  dwellers,  find  it  in  every  city  of 
the  world  since  there  were  cities,  find  it  consistent  with  any  form 
of  marriage,  with  families  matriarchal,  patriarchal,  polygynous, 
and  monogynous.  The  Jew  throughout  Christian  history  has 
suffered  from  overcrowding  as  much  as  any  people  ever  did ; 
but  he  has  preserved  the  family  in  a  most  intense  form,  with 
more  success  than  many  of  the  races  which  oppressed  him. 
Even  the  sweatshop,  while  working  evil  to  the  individual,  does 
but  draw  tighter  the  family  bond. 

Therefore  we  are  illogical  in  our  fear  of  the  city-crowding  as 
the  enemy  of  the  home,  the  destroyer  of  family  life. 

Others,  identifying  family  life  with  the  industries  so  long 
accompanying  it,  disapprove  of  that  visible  and  rapid  economic 
evolution  in  which  the  "  domestic  industries "  as  such  dissolve 
and  disappear.  Yet  if  these  observers  would  but  study  the  history 
of  economics  they  would  find  the  period  of  undisputed  "  home 
industries"  was  not  that  of  high  development  in  family  life,  but 
rather  of  the  mixed  group  of  women  slaves  and  male  captives, 
when  marriage  in  our  sense  was  utterly  unknown.  The  attempt  to 
"revive  home  industries"  is  not  difficult,  since  our  modern  family 
still  maintains  that  primitive  labor  status  ;  but  it  is  reactionary, 
and  tends  to  no  real  improvement. 

"  Cooperative  housekeeping,"  as  a  term,  needs  brief  but  clear 
discussion.  The  movement  to  which  the  phrase  is  applied  is  a 
natural  one,  inevitable  and  advantageous.  It  consists  in  the 
orderly  development  of  domestic  industries  into  social  ones  ;  in 
the  gradual  substitution  of  the  shirt  you  buy  for  the  shirt  your 


526  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

wife  makes,  of  the  bread  of  the  public  baker  for  the  bread  of 
the  private  cook,  of  the  wine  of  known  manufacture  and  vintage 
for  the  wine  made  for  you  by  your  affectionate  great-aunt.  All 
industry  was  once  domestic.  All  industry  is  becoming  social. 
That  is  the  line  of  industrial  evolution.  Now  what  is  "cooperative 
housekeeping  "  ?  It  is  an  attempt  to  continue  domestic  industry 
without  its  natural  base.  The  family  was  for  long  the  only  eco- 
nomic unit.  The  family  is  still,  though  greatly  reduced  and  waste- 
fully  inefficient,  an  economic  unit.  A  group  of  families  is  not  a 
unit  at  all.  It  has  no  structure,  no  function,  no  existence.  Indi- 
viduals may  combine,  do  combine,  should  combine,  must  combine, 
to  form  social  groups.  Families  are  essentially  uncombinable. 

Vintner,  brewer,  baker,  spinner,  weaver,  dyer,  tallow  chandler, 
soapmaker,  and  all  their  congeners  were  socially  evolved  from 
the  practicers  of  inchoate  domestic  industries.  Soon  the  cook 
and  the  cleaner  will  take  place  with  these,  as  the  launderer 
already  has  to  a  great  degree.  At  no  step  of  the  process  is  there 
the  faintest  hint  of  "  cooperative  housekeeping."  Forty  families 
may  patronize  and  maintain  one  bakeshop.  They  do  not  "co- 
operate" to  do  this  ;  they  separately  patronize  it.  The  same  forty 
families  might  patronize  and  maintain  one  cookshop,  and  never 
know  one  another's  names. 

If  the  forty  families  endeavored  to  "  cooperate "  and  start 
that  bakeshop,  or  that  cookshop,  they  would  meet  the  same 
difficulty,  the  same  failure,  that  always  faces  illegitimate  and 
unnatural  processes. 

The  material  forms  of  home  life,  the  character  of  its  structure 
and  functions  depend  upon  the  relation  of  the  members  of  the 
family.  In  analyzing  home  conditions  therefore  we  will  classify 
them  thus  : 

A.  Ownership  of  women.  —  It  is  to  this  condition  that  we 
may  clearly  trace  the  isolation  of  the  home,  the  varying  degree 
of  segregation  of  the  woman  or  women  therein.  The  home  is 
inaugurated  immediately  upon  marriage,  its  nature  and  situation 
depending  upon  the  man,  and  in  it  the  man  secludes  his  wife. 
In  this  regard  our  home  is  a  lineal  descendant  of  the  harem. 
It  is  but  a  short  time  since  the  proverb  told  us  "the  woman,  the 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT       527 

cat,  and  the  chimney  should  never  leave  the  house  "  ;  and  again, 
"A  woman  should  leave  the  house  but  three  times  —  when  she 
is  christened,  when  she  is  married,  when  she  is  buried."  In  cur- 
rent comment  upon  modern  home  conditions  we  still  find  deep 
displeasure  that  the  woman  is  so  much  away  from  home.  The 
continued  presence  of  the  woman  in  the  home  is  held  to  be  an 
essential  condition.  Following  this  comes  — 

B.  Woman  service.  —  The  house  is  a  place  where  the  man 
has  his  meals  cooked  and  served  by  the  woman  ;  his  general 
cleaning  and  mending  done  by  her;  she  is  his  servant.  This 
condition  accompanies  marriage,  be  it  observed,  and  precedes 
maternity.  It  has  no  relation  whatever  to  motherhood.  If  there 
are  no  children  the  woman  remains  the  house-servant  of  the 
man.  If  she  has  many,  their  care  must  not  prevent  the  service 
of  his  meals. 

In  America  to-day,  in  one  family  out  of  sixteen,  the  man  is 
able  to  hire  other  women  to  wait  upon  him  ;  but  his  wife  is 
merely  raised  to  the  position  of  a  sort  of  "  section  boss  "  ;  she 
still  manages  the  service  of  the  house  for  him.  This  woman 
service  has  no  relation  to  the  family  in  any  vital  sense  ;  it  is  a 
relic  of  the  period  of  woman  slavery  in  the  patriarchal  time ;  it 
exhibits  not  the  evolution  of  a  true  monogamy,  but  merely  the 
ancient  industrial  polygamous  group  shorn  down  to  one  lingering 
female  slave.  Under  this  head  of  wife  service,  we  must  place  all 
the  confused  activities  of  the  modern  home.  Reduced  and  sim- 
plified as  these  are,  they  still  involve  several  undeveloped  trades 
and  their  enforced  practice  by  nearly  all  women  keeps  down  the 
normal  social  tendency  to  specialization.  While  all  men,  speaking 
generally,  have  specialized  in  some  form  of  social  activities,  have 
become  masons,  smiths,  farmers,  sailors,  carpenters,  doctors,  mer- 
chants, and  the  like ;  all  women,  speaking  generally,  have  remained 
at  the  low  industrial  level  of  domestic  servants.  The  limitation  is 
clear  and  sharp,  and  is  held  to  be  an  essential,  if  not  the  essen- 
tial, condition  of  home  life ;  the  woman,  being  married,  must 
work  in  the  home  for  the  man.  We  are  so  absolutely  accustomed 
to  this  relation,  that  a  statement  of  it  produces  no  more  result 
than  if  one  solemnly  announces  that  fire  is  hot  and  ice  cold. 


528  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

To  visualize  it  let  us  reverse  the  position.  Let  us  suppose  that 
the  conditions  of  home  life  required  every  man  upon  marriage 
to  become  his  wife's  butler,  footman,  coachman,  cook ;  every 
man,  all  men,  necessarily  following  the  profession  of  domestic 
servants.  This  is  an  abhorrent,  an  incredible  idea.  So  is  the 
other.  That  an  entire  sex  should  be  the  domestic  servants  of 
the  other  sex  is  abhorrent  and  incredible. 

Under  this  same  head  we  may  place  all  the  prominent  but 
little  understood  evils  of  the  "  servant  question."  The  position 
is  simple.  The  home  must  be  served  by  women.  If  the  wife  is 
unable  to  perform  the  service  other  women  must  be  engaged. 
These  must  not  be  married  women,  for  no  married  man  wishes 
his  private  servant  to  serve  another  man.  When  the  coachman 
marries  the  cook,  he  prefers  to  segregate  her  in  the  rooms  over 
the  stables,  to  cook  for  him  alone.  Therefore  our  women  servants 
form  an  endless  procession  of  apprentices,  untrained  young  per- 
sons learning  of  the  housewife  mainly  her  personal  preferences 
and  limitations.  Therefore  is  the  grade  of  household  services 
necessarily  and  permanently  low  ;  and  household  service  means 
most  of  the  world's  feeding,  cleaning,  and  the  care  of  children. 
The  third  essential  home  condition  is  : 

C.  The  economic  dependence  of  women. — rThis  is  the  natural 
corollary  of  the  other  two.  If  a  man  keeps  a  servant  he  must 
feed  him,  or  her.  The  economic  dependence  of  the  woman  fol- 
lows upon  her  servitude.  The  family  with  the  male  head  has 
assumed  that  the  male  shall  serve  society  and  the  female  shall 
serve  him.  This  opens  up  an  immense  field  of  consequences, 
reacting  most  violently  upon  the  family,  among  which  we  will 
select  here  two  most  typical  and  conspicuous.  Suppose  that  the 
man's  social  service  is  of  small  value  as  we  measure  and  reward 
our  laborers.  His  return  is  small.  His  wages  we  will  roughly 
estimate  at  $600  a  year,  a  sum  the  purchasing  power  of  which 
is  variable.  In  our  present  conditions  $600  is  little  enough  for 
one  person.  For  two  it  allows  but  $300  each.  For  six,  if  they 
have  four  children,  it  is  $100  a  year  apiece  —  less  than  $2.00  a 
week  for  each,  to  pay  for  food,  clothes,  shelter,  everything.  This 
visibly  spells  poverty.  While  one  man's  production  is  worth  to 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT       529 

society  but  so  much,  and  while  that  one  man's  production  is 
forced  to  meet  the  consumption  of  six ;  so  long,  even  without 
any  other  cause,  the  resultant  is  general  poverty  —  a  persistent 
condition  in  the  majority  of  homes.  To  segregate  half  the  pro- 
ductive energy  of  the  world  and  use  it  in  private  service  of  the 
crudest  sort  is  economic  waste.  To  force  the  low-grade  man 
to  maintain  an  entire  family  is  to  force  a  constant  large  supply 
of  low-grade  men. 

The  second  of  these  consequences  is  the  unnatural  phenome- 
non of  the  idle  woman.  The  man,  whose  sex-relation  spurs  him 
to  industry,  and  whose  exceptional  powers  meet  special  reward, 
then  proceeds  to  shower  gifts  and  pleasures  upon  the  woman  he 
loves.  That  man  shall  be  "  a  good  provider  "  is  frankly  held  to 
be  his  end  of  the  family  duty,  a  most  essential  condition  of  home 
life.  This  result,  as  we  so  frequently  and  sadly  see,  is  the  devel- 
opment of  a  kind  of  woman  who  performs  no  industrial  service, 
produces  nothing,  and  consumes  everything ;  and  a  kind  of  man 
who  subordinates  every  social  and  moral  claim  to  this  widely 
accredited  "  first  duty,"  to  provide,  without  limit,  for  his  wife 
and  children. 

These  two  home  conditions,  the  enormous  tax  upon  the  father, 
if  he  is  poor,  together  with  the  heavy  toil  of  the  mother,  and  the 
opposite  one  of  the  rich  man  maintaining  a  beautiful  parasite, 
have  visible  and  serious  results  upon  the  family. 

The  supposedly  essential  basic  relations,  the  ownership  of 
woman,  the  servitude  of  woman,  and  the  economic  dependence 
of  woman,  with  their  resultants,  give  rise  to  the  visible  material 
conditions  with  which  we  are  familiar.  The  predominant  con- 
cerns of  the  kitchen  and  dining  room,  involving  the  entire  serv- 
ice of  the  working  housewife,  rigidly  measure  the  limitations  of 
such  families  ;  while  the  added  freedom  of  the  woman  whose 
housework  is  done  vicariously  seldom  tends  to  a  nobler  life.  Our 
insanitary  households,  our  false  and  shallow  taste,  our  low  stand- 
ard of  knowledge  in  food  values  and  nutrition,  the  various  prosaic 
limitations  within  which  we  are  born  and  reared  are  in  the  main 
traceable  to  the  arrested  development  of  the  woman,  owing  to  the 
above  major  conditions  of  home  life. 


530  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Let  us  now  show  the  reaction  of  the  conditions  above  stated 
upon  the  family  in  modern  society,  in  the  order  given,  as  they 
affect  (a)  marriage,  (b)  maternity,  (c)  child-culture,  (d)  the  indi- 
vidual and  society. 

We  are  much  concerned  in  the  smooth  and  rapid  development 
of  a  higher  type  of  marriage,  yet  fail  to  see  that  our  home  con- 
ditions militate  against  such  development.  The  effect  of  the 
modern  home,  even  with  its  present  degree  of  segregation  of 
women,  with  its  inadequate,  confused,  laborious  industrial  proc- 
esses, and  with  its  overwhelming  expenses,  is  to  postpone  and 
often  prevent  marriage,  to  degrade  marriage  when  accomplished 
through  the  servile  and  dependent  position  of  the  wife,  and  also 
to  precipitate  unwise  and  premature  marriage  on  the  part  of 
young  women  because  of  their  bitter  dissatisfaction  with  the  con- 
ditions of  their  previous  home.  This  last  gives  an  advantage  in 
reproduction  to  the  poorer  types.  The  wiser  women,  preferring 
the  ills  she  has  to  those  she  foresees  only  too  clearly,  hesitates 
long,  delays,  often  refuses  altogether ;  not  from  an  aversion  to 
marriage,  or  to  motherhood,  but  from  a  steadily  growing  objection 
to  the  position  of  a  servant. 

The  man,  seeing  about  him  the  fretful  inefficiency  of  so  many 
misplaced  women,  hearing  ad  nauseam  the  reiterant  uniform 
complaints  on  "the  servant  question,"  knowing  the  weight  of 
the  increasing  burden  for  which  the  man  must  "pay,  pay,  pay," 
waits  longer  and  longer  before  he  can  "afford  to  marry"  ;  with 
a  resultant  increase  in  immorality. 

This  paradoxical  position  must  be  faced  fully  and  squarely. 
The  industrial  conditions  of  the  modern  home  are  such  as  to 
delay  and  often  prevent  marriage.  Since  "  the  home  "  is  sup- 
posed to  arise  only  from  marriage,  it  looks  as  though  the  situa- 
tion were  frankly  suicidal.  So  far,  not  seeing  these  things,  we 
have  merely  followed  our  world-old  habit  of  blaming  the  woman. 
She  used  to  be  content  with  these  conditions  we  say  —  she  ought 
to  be  now  —  back  to  nature  !  The  woman  refuses  to  go  back,  the 
home  refuses  to  go  forward,  and  marriage  waits.  The  initial  con- 
dition of  ownership,  even  without  service,  reacts  unfavorably  upon 
the  kind  of  marriage  most  desired.  A  woman  slave  is  not  a  wife. 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT       531 

The  more  absolutely  the  woman  is  her  own  mistress,  in  accepting 
her  husband  and  in  her  life  with  him,  the  higher  is  the  grade 
of  love  and  companionship  open  to  them.  Again  the  economic 
dependence  of  the  woman  militates  against  a  true  marriage,  in 
that  the  element  of  economic  profit  degrades  and  commercializes 
love  and  so  injures  the  family.  It  may  be  said  that  the  family 
with  the  male  head  cannot  exist  in  a  pure  form  without  its  orig- 
inal concomitants  of  absolute  personal  ownership  and  exploitation 
of  woman.  When  the  ownership  is  no  longer  that  of  true  slavery 
but  enters  the  contract  stage,  when  marriage  becomes  an  eco- 
nomic relation,  then  indeed  is  it  degraded.  Polygyny  is  a  low 
form  of  marriage  ;  but,  as  modern  polygynists  have  held,  it  at 
least  tends  to  preclude  prostitution.  The  higher  marriage  toward 
which  we  are  tending  requires  a  full-grown  woman,  no  one's 
property  or  servant,  self-supporting  and  proudly  independent. 
Such  marriage  will  find  expression  in  a  very  different  home. 

Next  comes  the  reaction  upon  motherhood,  the  most  vital  fact 
in  the  whole  institution.  Our  home  conditions  affect  motherhood 
injuriously  in  many  ways.  The  ownership  of  the  woman  by  the 
man  has  developed  a  false  code  of  morals  and  manners,  under 
which  girls  are  not  reared  in  understanding  of  the  privileges, 
rights,  and  preeminent  duties  of  motherhood.  We  make  the  duty 
to  the  man  first,  the  duty  to  the  child  second  —  an  artificial  and 
mischievous  relation.  There  is  no  more  important  personal  func- 
tion than  motherhood,  and  every  item  of  arrangement  in  the 
family,  in  the  home,  should  subtend  its  overmastering  interests. 

Ownership  of  women  first  interferes  with  the  power  of  selec- 
tion so  essential  to  right  motherhood,  and,  second,  enforces 
motherhood  undesired  —  a  grave  physiological  evil.  The  ensuant 
condition  of  female  servitude  is  an  injury  in  demanding  labor  in- 
compatible with  right  maternity,  and  in  lowering  the  average  of 
heredity  through  the  arrest  of  social  development  in  the  mother. 
It  is  not  good  for  the  race  that  the  majority  of  its  female  parents 
should  be  unskilled  laborers,  plus  a  few  unskilled  idlers. 

In  poverty  the  overworked  woman  dreads  maternity,  and  avoids 
it  if  she  can.  If  she  cannot,  her  unwelcome  and  too  frequent 
children  are  not  what  is  needed  to  build  up  our  people.  In  wealth, 


532  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  woman  becomes  a  perpetual  child,  greedy  and  irresponsible, 
dreads  maternity,  and  avoids  it  if  she  can.  Her  children  are  few 
and  often  frail.  Neither  the  conditions  of  the  poor  home  nor  of 
the  rich  tend  to  a  joyous  and  competent  maternity. 

In  this  one  respect  the  home,  under  present  conditions,  is 
proved  an  unfit  vehicle  for  the  family.  In  itself  it  tends  to  reduce 
the  birth  rate,  or  to  lower  the  quality  of  the  most  numerous 
children ;  and  all  of  them  inherit  the  limitations  of  a  servile  or 
an  irresponsible  motherhood. 

As  regards  child-culture,  our  home  conditions  present  a  further 
marked  unfitness.  Not  one  home  in  a  thousand  even  attempts  to 
make  provision  for  child-culture.  If  the  home  has  but  one  room 
that  room  is  a  kitchen  ;  but  few  indeed  are  the  families  who  can 
"afford  a  nursery."  Child-care  is  wholly  subordinate  to  kitchen 
service  ;  the  home  is  a  complicated,  inconsistent  group  of  indus- 
tries, in  which  the  child  must  wait  for  spare  moments  of  attention ; 
which  attention  when  given  is  that  of  a  tired  cook,  or  a  worried 
housekeeper.  No  clearer  comment  can  be  made  on  the  inade- 
quacy of  home  conditions  to  serve  their  natural  ends  than  in  this 
major  instance  ;  they  do  not  promote,  but  on  the  contrary  they 
prohibit  the  development  of  higher  standards  of  child-culture. 

As  to  mere  maintenance  of  life,  our  children  die  most  numer- 
ously during  the  years  of  infancy,  when  they  are  most  wholly  at 
home.  As  to  reproduction,  we  have  shown  the  effect  on  that ; 
and  as  to  improvement,  it  is  a  general  admission  that  the  im- 
provement of  the  human  stock  does  not  keep  pace  with  material 
progress.  We  need  here  a  wise  revision  of  domestic  conditions 
in  the  interests  of  the  child.  At  present  any  man  who  has  a 
home  to  let,  be  it  room,  apartment,  or  house,  prefers  his  tenants 
to  be  without  children.  The  home,  the  birthplace,  the  rearing- 
place,  is  not  built,  fitted,  nor  managed  for  the  benefit  of  children. 

What  is  its  further  effect  on  the  individual,  and  through  him 
on  society  ?  Do  the  common  home  conditions  of  our  time  pro- 
mote health,  insure  peace  and  comfort,  tend  to  that  higher 
development  of  the  individual  so  essential  to  social  progress  ? 

Here  we  find  another  large  ground  for  criticism.  Modern  soci- 
ety calls  for  individuals  broad-minded,  public-spirited,  democratic, 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT       533 

courageous,  just,  intelligent,  educated,  and  specialized  for  social 
service.  The  family  with  the  male  head  and  its  accompanying 
conditions  of  woman-ownership,  service,  and  dependence  tends 
to  maintain  in  our  growing  democracy  the  grade  of  develop- 
ment, the  habits  of  mind,  the  childish  limitations  of  its  remote 
past.  In  it  is  a  masculine  dominance  which  finds  expression  in 
our  political  androcracy.  In  it  is  a  degraded  womanhood  which 
not  only  limits  individual  development  in  the  mother,  but  checks 
it  in  the  father  through  heredity  and  association,  and  acts  power- 
fully to  keep  back  the  progress  of  the  child.  Because  of  the  low 
grade  of  domestic  industry,  the  food  habits  of  humanity  have 
remained  so  long  what  they  are,  tending  to  self-indulgence  and 
excess,  to  extravagance,  to  many  forms  of  disease. 

Mere  confinement  to  a  house  is  in  itself  unwholesome,  and  when 
that  house  is  a  cookshop  and  laundry,  it  is  further  disadvantageous. 

The  man,  bound  in  honor  (in  his  androcentric  code  of  honor) 
to  provide  at  all  costs  for  his  dependent  family,  has  saddled  him- 
self with  the  task  of  making  the  product  of  one  meet  the  con- 
sumption of  many ;  and  in  making  the  woman  a  nonproductive 
consumer,  he  has  maintained  in  half  the  world  the  attitude  of 
the  child  —  the  willingness  to  take,  with  no  thought  of  giving 
an  equivalent. 

The  social  processes,  left  wholly  to  the  male,  are  necessarily 
belligerent  and  competitive  ;  and  in  the  resultant  turmoil,  each 
man  must  needs  strive  to  maintain  his  little  island  of  personal 
comfort  rather  than  to  do  his  best  work  for  the  world. 

Home  conditions  which  tend  to  results  like  these  require  most 
serious  consideration.  They  react  upon  the  family  in  general  as 
tending  to  restrict  its  natural  evolution  toward  higher  forms. 
They  react  upon  it  specifically  as  we  have  seen,  precipitating 
injudicious  marriage,  postponing  marriage,  degrading  marriage ; 
similarly  do  they  affect  motherhood,  enforcing  it  where  the 
woman  is  not  free  to  choose,  and  where  she  is  free  to  choose 
tending  to  postpone  and  prevent  it  because  of  its  difficulties. 
The  mechanical  and  industrial  conditions  of  our  homes,  with 
their  reaction  upon  character,  lie  at  the  base  of  that  artificial 
restriction  of  motherhood  so  widely  lamented. 


534  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Again,  they  react  upon  child-culture,  in  age-long  suppression 
of  that  greatest  of  sciences,  in  confining  the  care  of  little  chil- 
dren to  the  ignorance  of  incompetent  mothers  and  less  competent 
servants.  While  the  home  enforces  the  condition  of  female 
servitude  our  children  must  continue  to  be  born  of  and  reared 
by  servants. 

Finally,  these  same  conditions,  these  limitations  in  structure 
and  function,  this  arrested  womanhood  and  low-grade  child-culture 
do  not  tend  to  develop  the  best  individuals  nor  to  promote  social 
progress.  Such  as  we  are  we  are  largely  made  by  our  homes, 
and  surely  we  do  not  wish  to  remain  such  as  we  are.  Our  aver- 
age health,  longevity,  efficiency,  standard  of  comfort,  happiness, 
and  pleasure  do  not  show  the  most  wholesome  influences. 

The  work  of  the  constructive  sociologist  in  this  field  is  to 
establish  what  lines  of  change  and  development  in  our  homes, 
what  broad  and  hopeful  new  conditions,  will  act  in  harmony 
with  social  processes,  will  tend  to  a  better  marriage,  a  higher 
grade  of  motherhood,  a  freer  and  nobler  environment  for  the 
individual.  We  need  homes  in  which  mother  and  father  will  be 
equally  free  and  equally  bound,  both  resting  together  in  its 
shelter  and  privacy,  both  working  together  for  its  interests. 

This  requires  structural  and  functional  changes  that  shall  elim- 
inate the  last  of  our  domestic  industries  and  leave  a  home  that 
is  no  one's  workshop. 

The  woman,  no  longer  any  man's  property,  nor  any  man's 
servant,  must  needs  develop  social  usefulness,  becoming  more 
efficient,  intelligent,  experienced.  Such  women  will  bring  to 
bear  upon  their  proper  problems,  maternity  and  child-culture,  a 
larger  wisdom  and  a  wider  power  than  they  now  possess. 

The  home,  planned,  built,  and  maintained  by  men  and  -women 
of  this  sort,  would  react  upon  its  constituent  family  in  wholly 
advantageous  ways.1 

1  For  a  detailed  and  more  definite  statement  of  Mrs.  Oilman's  ideas  concern- 
ing the  reaction  of  the  family  and  our  present  domestic  economy  upon  women 
and  children,  see  her  "  Women  and  Economics"  and  her  "  Concerning  Children." 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT  535 

51.    SOCIAL  USE  OF  THE  POSTGRADUATE  MOTHER1 

Nature  has  indeed  conveyed  to  us  in  no  uncertain  manner  her 
determination  that  her  gifts  shall  be  shared  with  an  absolute 
justice  between  her  men-children  and  her  women-children.  The 
boy  has  his  long,  straight  path  of  progress,  passing  on  into  youth, 
and  later  manhood,  up  to  the  point  where  senile  decay  threatens; 
which  point  clean  living,  noble  purpose,  intellectual  activity  and 
wise  physical,  mental,  and  moral  hygiene  of  every  sort  may  push 
far  into  the  seventies  or  eighties,  or  even  beyond,  if  the  prophets 
of  a  longer  term  of  life  for  mankind  may  be  believed.  This  long 
straight  pathway  gives  man  his  preeminence  as  a  special  worker 
and  vocational  expert.  The  girl,  on  the  other  hand,  has  her 
better  start  in  constitutional  vigor  and  her  surer  normality  and 
balance  of  faculties  ;  and  the  woman,  throughout  early  and  later 
experience,  possesses  her  stronger  recuperative  power,  her  greater 
capacity  for  constant  labor  if  free  from  excessive  strain  and  varied 
in  sort ;  and  her  curving  line  of  muscular  and  nervous  power, 
while  giving  more  variability  and  less  dependable  response  to 
highly  organized  labor,  insures  her  a  finer  and  more  flexible  ad- 
justment to  the  general  demands  of  the  social  order.  If  she 
marries  and  has  children  she  has  her  longer  "  curve  "  of  recurrent 
need  for  special  consideration,  protection  and  care.  At  last  she 
emerges  from  the  variability  which  is  the  price  of  her  special  sex- 
contribution  to  the  social  fabric,  and  becomes  in  a  peculiar  and  a 
new  sense  a  citizen  of  the  world ;  a  Person,  whose  own  relation- 
ship to  the  social  whole  may  now  of  right  become  her  main 
concern.  The  audiences  composed  of  professional  workers  and 
members  of  reformatory  organizations  and  leaders  in  philanthropy 
are  often  a  striking  testimony  to  the  as  yet  half-conscious  response 
of  women  to  this  -call  of  their  second  youth.  The  faces  of  women 
of  sixty  years  and  over,  lined  with  marks  of  many  emotions  and 
much  lore  of  life-experience,  are  alight  with  an  enthusiasm  and  a 
hope,  a  strong  and  vital  interest  in  life  and  its  meaning,  which 
loses  nothing  in  attractiveness  when  matched  against  the  groups 

1  By  Anna  Garlin  Spencer.  From  Woman's  Share  in  Social  Culture,  pp.  233- 
252.  Mitchell  Kennerley,  New  York,  1913. 


536  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  college  girls  as  they  leave  their  Alma  Mater.  Indeed  the 
mothers  are  often  younger  at  the  moment  than  their  daughters 
just  graduating,  because  love  has  taught  them  as  well  as  books, 
and  contact  with  child-nature  has  kept  them  hopeful  as  well  as 
made  them  wise,  while  the  student,  still  in  the  period  of  acquisi- 
tion, is  always  in  danger  of  mistaking  words  for  life,  theories  for 
realities.  Moreover,  women  who  have  had  a  true  marriage  and  a 
welcome  discipline  of  family  service  have  had  what  no  young 
women,  and  few  if  any  unmarried  women  possess,  the  constant 
help  of  the  masculine  way  of  looking  at  things  to  balance  and 
keep  sane  their  distinctly  feminine  approach  to  life.  They  are 
therefore  able,  if  they  have  used  well  their  opportunities,  to  under- 
stand men  and  women  alike  and  to  work  for  and  with  both  im- 
partially. This  is  a  point  of  far  more  social  importance  than  is  at 
present  recognized.  If  there  are  any  dangers  of  "  feminization  " 
threatening  us  in  the  school  or  in  society  at  large,  any  real  over- 
plus of  specially  "womanly  influence  "  in  our  present  civilization, 
those  dangers  inhere  in  the  large  celibate  majority  of  intellectual 
leaders  and  representatives  of  womanhood  in  the  field  of  expert 
knowledge  and  work.  There  is  a  "finicky,"  overprecise,  ultra- 
refined  morality  and  idealism  which  women  develop  by  them- 
selves, and  which  is  difficult  to  adjust  to  the  larger,  looser,  simpler, 
but  often  more  vital  ethics  and  aspiration  of  men.  The  rounded 
wisdom  and  experience  of  the  postgraduate  mother  (who  usually 
has  to  practice  her  motherhood  on  her  husband  as  well  as  her 
sons  and  thus  learns  tolerance  and  breadth  of  view)  will  come  to 
be  prized  at  its  full  social  value,  therefore,  when  more  women 
qualify  for  its  highest  potency  and  the  world  learns  at  last  what 
"old  women"  are  for,  and  what  social  end  they  may  serve.  Then 
it  will  be  at  last  understood  why  nature  preserves  so  carefully 
both  the  life  and  the  health  of  women  ;  why  she  gives  them  a 
new  strength  of  body,  a  new  youthfulness  of  purpose,  a  new 
capacity  for  spiritual  adventure,  so  far  in  excess  of  men,  when 
the  time  comes  that  their  whole  life  may  rightfully  become  their 
own  in  a  more  complete  sense  than  ever  before. 

It  is  said  of  the  high-caste  Urahman  that  he  has  three  stages 
in  life,  three  grand  divisions  of  duty  and  of  experience.    First,  he 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT       537 

must  be  a  learner,  devoted  to  acquiring  the  knowledge  that  a 
leader  of  men  should  possess ;  next,  he  must  be  a  father  and  house- 
holder, paying  loyally  his  debt  to  society  by  rearing  offspring  who 
may  connect  his  ancestors  with  his  descendants  in  worship  and 
family  continuity  ;  last,  he  may  become  a  pilgrim,  a  solitary  seeker 
for  truth,  enjoying  at  will  the  high  communion  of  those  who  live 
but  for  spiritual  ends  of  being.  The  modern  woman  has  now  out- 
lined before  her,  faintly  as  yet  but  growing  in  clearness,  her  own 
"threefold  path  of  life."  First,  the  learner  and  the  doer  fitting 
for  self-support  and  self-direction  ;  next,  the  devoted  servant  of 
life's  most  intimate  demands  upon  human  beings  of  the  mother 
sex  ;  last,  a  conscious  sharer,  in  a  new  and  more  inspiring  sense, 
in  the  larger  life  of  the  race. 

There  can  be  no  general  clearness  of  vision  as  to  this  three- 
fold path  of  womanhood,  however,  until  more  educated  and  com- 
petent women  prepare  for  their  last  and  splendid  opportunity  of 
service  by  a  better  use  of  the  leisure  hours  of  that  period  of  life 
which  is  given  especially  to  family  interests.  The  vulgar  phrase, 
"  She  does  not  need  accomplishments  now,  her  market  is  made," 
only  emphasizes  the  too  frequent  undercurrent  of  women's  atti- 
tude toward  personal  achievement.  If  one  must  earn  a  living  out- 
side the  home,  ambition  now  makes  most  women  seek  to  do  it 
in  the  best  way  they  can  and  to  the  highest  results  of  financial 
and  social  return.  But  the  average  married  woman,  with  or  with- 
out children,  is  too  prone  to  look  upon  her  life  as  ceasing  to 
afford  or  to  need  new  or  continued  modes  of  self-expression. 
There  is  an  almost  fatal  tendency  among  young  married  women 
of  average  education  and  circumstances  to  give  up  wholly  the 
vocational  interest  which  was  theirs  before  marriage.  "  No,  I 
don't  play  now,  I  gave  up  practicing  after  John  was  born."  "  No, 
I  don't  paint  now,  the  house  takes  so  much  time  and  Mary  is  a 
great  care."  "  I  never  think  of  reading  a  book  now,  the  maga- 
zines are  all  I  can  manage  with  the  house,  and  no  maid."  "  I 
can't  work  at  my  trade  or  my  clerical  work  now,  of  course,  for  I 
can't  be  gone  from  the  house  all  day."  How  often  these  and 
similar  expressions  are  heard  !  It  is  true,  of  course,  that  competi- 
tive industry  being  arranged  for  all-da}'  service,  most  married 


538  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

women  are  unable  to  engage  profitably  or  properly  in  the  work 
they  did  before  marriage.  But  there  are  few  women  who  cannot 
keep  at  least  a  selective  and  constant  interest,  and  some  small 
practice  to  "keep  the  hand  in,"  that  will  stand  them  in  stead  if 
there  should  be  need  of  earning  in  case  of  widowhood  or  finan- 
cial calamity,  or  when  larger  leisure  from  the  upgrowing  of  the 
children  makes  it  well  for  them  to  have  some  special  interest  of 
their  own.  Moreover,  the  period  of  life  when  a  woman  has  the 
largest  end  of  her  activity  fastened  to  the  family  need,  and  her 
economic  position,  therefore,  properly  secured  by  her  husband's 
work  for  the  family,  is  precisely  the  period  when  she  may  use  her 
leisure,  be  it  much  or  little,  in  preparation  for  some  kind  of  work 
she  wants  to  do  but  was  not  trained  for  as  a  girl.  How  many 
men  find  themselves  in  positions  where  they  are  kept  doing  what 
they  would  so  gladly  exchange  for  another  sort  of  labor  no  one 
was  wise  enough  to  fit  them  for  in  youth  !  The  tragedies  of 
misfit  industry,  the  heroisms  of  men  who  stick  at  a  hated  task 
because  it  is  all  they  know  how  to  do  and  they  dare  not  leave  it 
for  the  sake  of  wife  and  bairns,  —  these  are  material  for  great 
dramas.  How  rich  an  opportunity  many  women  waste,  an  oppor- 
tunity to  prepare  in  a  leisurely  way,  through  years  of  security  of 
home  protection  and  care,  by  use  of  the  bits  of  leisure  almost 
every  day  affords,  for  the  work  nature  intended  they  should  do. 
Women  have  but  just  begun  to  see  and  use  the  advantages  of 
their  threefold  path  of  life  and  only  those  most  clear-sighted  and 
brave  can  as  yet  do  so. 

One  thing  stands  in  the  way  of  women's  realization  and  ap- 
propriation of  these  advantages,  and  that  is  the  aristocratic  attitude 
of  both  men  and  women  toward  "  paid  work  "  for  women.  So 
long  as  it  is  thought  unfitting  for  a  married  woman  to  earn  money 
inside  or  outside  the  home,  so  long  as  it  popularly  discredits  a 
man  if  his  wife  thus  earns  as  a  result  of  her  own  labor  outside 
domestic  work,  we  shall  have  a  majority  of  women  unwilling  and 
unable  to  use  to  best  advantage  the  leisure  hours  of  their  earlier 
married  life  and  hence  unable  to  use  most  effectively  their  third 
stage  of  opportunity.  Enough  has  been  said  in  this  discussion  to 
show  that  it  is  intended  to  strengthen  rather  than  to  weaken  the 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT  539 

demands  of  family  life  and  child-care  upon  women.  It  remains 
to  insist  that  until  women  themselves  outgrow,  and  teach  their 
"  men  folks  "  to  outgrow,  the  notion  that  it  is  honorable  for  men 
to  earn  money  in  useful  labor  but  dishonorable  or  a  dire  mis- 
fortune for  women  to  do  so,  the  right  personal  and  social  use  of 
women's  lives  cannot  be  accomplished.  It  is  now  considered  right 
and  highly  proper  for  a  woman  to  earn  money  if  unmarried  and 
her  "  father  can't  take  care  of  her,"  or  if  a  widow  whose  "  hus- 
band did  not  leave  enough  to  support  her,"  or  a  wife  whose  hus- 
band is  disabled,  ill,  or  incompetent.  It  must  become  natural  and 
common  in  the  public  eye  for  any  woman  to  earn  money  who 
wants  to  and  can.  At  present  we  have  advanced  little  beyond  the 
period  when  the  "  wife  of  Thomas  Hawkins  "  was  granted  by  the 
selectmen  of  her  town,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  the  "  right  to 
sell  liquors  by  retayle,  considering  the  necessitie  and  weak  con- 
dition of  her  husband";  and  when  widows  were  "approved"  by 
the  church  trustees  to  earn  a  pittance  in  "  sweeping  and  dusting 
the  meetinghouse  "  because  they  had  no  "  provider."  l  The  great 
city  of  New  York  still  requires  its  married  women  teachers  to 
swear  that  their  husbands  are  morally,  mentally  or  physically  in- 
competent in  order  to  retain  their  positions! 

The  adjustment  in  plans  of  living  to  home  needs  and  obliga- 
tions is  a  private  concern  of  each  married  pair.  The  only  social 
claim  is  that  the  children,  if  there  are  any,  shall  be  well  cared  for 
in  all  respects,  physical,  mental,  moral  and  vocational.  The  ad- 
justment of  each  woman  to  her  own  vocational  desires,  capacities 
and  opportunities  is  a  matter  for  herself  and  her  husband  to 
settle  between  them  ;  it  is  not  even  the  proper  concern  of  either 
mother-in-law !  The  more  exceptional  women  earn  in  art  and  lit- 
erature, in  singing,  painting,  acting,  on  a  plane  where  it  is  clear 
they  are  conferring  social  benefits  and  hence  have  a  right  to  finan- 
cial returns  which  do  not  degrade  but  give  distinction,  the  more 
nearly  we  approach  a  time  when  common  women  may  earn  money 
by  any  sort  of  labor  they  can  do  well  enough  to  be  paid,  and 
whether  married  or  single,  without  injuring  their  own  or  their 
husband's  social  position.  We  are,  however,  a  long  way  from 

1  Early  Colonial  Records. 


540  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

that  day  now,  when  even  the  law  penalizes  the  marriage  of 
teachers  and  custom  forbids  any  organized  adjustment  of  labor 
to  the  special  needs  of  the  house-mother.  The  choice  for  the 
manual  worker  is  sharply  made,  "  labor  all  day  and  leave  your 
baby  at  the  day-nursery  or  stop  at  home  and  starve."  The  choice 
is  almost  equally  difficult  for  the  clerk,  the  stenographer,  the  tele- 
phone operator,  the  professional  woman,  the  business  manager. 
The  Utopias  in  which  all  these  difficulties  vanish  with  a  "presto 
change  "  are  interesting  to  read  of  in  books ;  but  what  is  really 
helping  the  actual  situation  is  that  men  and  women,  richer  or 
poorer,  but  of  the  moral  and  intellectual  elite,  are  now  working 
out  for  themselves  many  modifications  of  the  rigidity  of  modern 
industry  as  it  relates  to  the  married  woman  and  the  mother,  in  a 
most  difficult  but  a  most  useful  domestic  experimentation. 

Meanwhile  the  average  young  married  woman,  and  especially 
the  average  young  married  woman  of  good  education  and  fairly 
good  financial  circumstances,  needs  most  of  all  to  see  and  to  use 
her  fine  chance  for  preparation  for  vocational  achievement,  or  for 
social  usefulness,  after  she  has  become  released  from  the  heaviest 
duties  to  her  family.  Everything  done  by  such  a  young  woman 
in  a  professional  manner  and  for  pay  on  a  business  basis,  helps 
to  democratize  the  industry  of  women  and  to  place  the  whole 
relationship  of  her  sex  to  industry  on  a  truly  social  plane.  The 
aristocratic  notion  that  it  is  a  dire  calamity  for  a  married  woman 
to  have  to  earn  money  can  only  be  outgrown  by  having  multi- 
tudes of  married  women  who  do  not  have  to  earn  money  for  per- 
sonal comforts  or  family  well-being  do  something  that  the  world 
wants  to  pay  for  and  take  their  compensation  naturally  as  men 
take  it  for  worthy  service.  Whether  or  not,  however,  women 
earn  money  in  personal  labor  outside  the  home  during  the  years 
when  their  chief  devotion  must  be  to  the  family  needs,  they  can 
keep  interest  and  study  and  acquaintance  open  toward  the  free 
time  of  their  second  youth,  when  they  will  need  and  want  to  do 
something  for  and  by  themselves  to  round  out  their  own  personal 
lives  :  whether  that  something  shall  be  a  paid  or  an  unpaid  serv- 
ice. All  this  presupposes  that  women  shall  have  had  needed 
care  and  protection  and  support  in  their  distinctive  function  of 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT       541 

motherhood  and  thus  have  escaped  that  too  common  tragedy  of 
overwork  and  neglect  which  now  leaves  so  many  women  helpless 
and  invalid  in  middle  life.  The  majority  of  house-mothers  among 
the  wage-earning  class  are  now  overworked  and  underfed ;  over- 
burdened with  care  and  denied  all  the  diversions  and  rest  that 
enable  women  to  keep  well  and  happy  and  able  to  enter  upon 
their  third  stage  of  life  fitted  for  its  opportunities  and  its  joys. 

Moreover,  it  must  be  pressed  home  to  the  public  mind  and 
conscience  that  the  waste  of  womanhood  in  its  later  life  has  been 
throughout  the  ages,  and  now  is,  the  result  of  an  ignorant  and 
careless  treatment  of  girlhood.  The  same  scientific  inquiry  which 
proves  the  eligibility  of  womanhood  to  a  ripe  and  useful,  a  vital 
and  youthful-hearted  old  age,  demonstrates  beyond  cavil  the  social 
crime  of  ignoring  the  special  danger  point  in  the  physical  life  of 
woman.  We  learn  from  every  quarter  of  science  that  the  weak 
point  in  womanhood  is  between  the  ages  of  thirteen  or  fourteen, 
and  nineteen  or  twenty  years.  At  that  time  and  that  alone  death 
and  disease  stand  nearer  and  more  threatening  to  the  girl  than 
to  the  boy.  At  that  time  and  at  no  other,  save  during  actual 
childbearing,  the  womanhood  of  the  race  stands  in  greater  need 
of  special  protection  and  help  from  society  and  from  parenthood 
than  does  the  manhood  of  the  race.  Mature  women  may  always 
need  social  protection  against  long-continued,  monotonous  and 
uninterrupted  labor.  They  may  always  be  less  able  than  men  to 
survive  shocks  of  accident  or  to  sustain  hardest  trials  of  muscular 
effort  without  permanent  harm.  As  Professor  Thompson  says  : 
"  Men  are  stronger  in  relation  to  spasmodic  efforts  and  isolated 
feats."  Hence  the  rule  of  the  sea  in  shipwreck,  or  of  the  land 
in  any  terrible  disaster,  the  rule  of  "women  first  to  be  saved," 
has  a  reason  in  the  nature  of  things,  since  men  can  summon  so 
much  more  special  power  for  the  special  demand.  The  greater 
tenacity  of  life  among  women,  however,  their  greater  resistance 
to  disease,  their  larger  capacity  for  continual,  sustained  effort  if 
that  is  varied  in  form  and  not  too  severe,  are  ample  proofs  that 
women  need  not  be  invalids  or  "weak,"  and  that  it  is  a  social 
mistake  or  a  social  crime,  or  both,  if  they  are  so  in  any  prevail- 
ing numbers  at  any  period  of  life.  The  reason  that  the  old  age 


542  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  women  is  so  often  pathological  in  condition,  the  reason  that 
marriage  and  maternity  mean  so  often  extreme  suffering  and 
disease,  the  reason  that  so  many  women  fail  of  the  second  youth 
that  is  their  birthright  and  have  instead  a  long  decay  of  life  in 
depressing  helplessness  and  futile  longing,  is  more  than  all  else 
because  the  first  youth  of  women  is  so  generally  misused.  Those 
years  between  fourteen  and  twenty  when  death  and  disease  stand 
nearest  to  womanhood  are  the  very  years  when  in  many  civili- 
zations marriage  and  childbearing  have  made  their  heaviest 
demands  upon  the  young  life.  The  physical  weakness  of  both 
men  and  women  in  India,  their  lack  of  stamina,  their  easy  yield- 
ing to  all  manner  of  diseases,  their  quick  fading  at  the  touch  of 
hardship,  this  is  the  price  India  has  paid  for  her  child  marriages. 
And  not  this  alone,  although  this  is  so  obvious  that  all  mark  its 
terrible  consequences  of  social  mistake.  There  is  another  price 
paid,  the  very  life-portion  of  nature's  dower  to  the  women  of 
India,  nature's  dower  of  health  and  happiness.  Nowhere  do 
women  so  age  in  mid-life,  so  suffer  with  all  manner  of  maladjust- 
ments of  physical,  mental,  and  moral  condition,  as  in  countries 
where  girlhood  is  thus  sacrificed,  and  the  time  of  all  others  when 
womanhood  most  needs  care  for  the  upbuilding  of  the  individual 
life  is  misused  for  a  premature  devotion  to  other  lives.  The  sad- 
ness of  the  women  of  India,  who  have  become  conscious  of  their 
lot  and  its  contrast  with  happier  lives,  is  only  understood  when 
we  see  clearly  what  an  outrage  upon  nature's  laws  is  this  mar- 
riage of  unformed  girlhood.  We  trace  in  every  civilization  that 
has  thus  ignored  the  danger  point  in  womanhood's  physical  de- 
velopment the  same  weakness  in  the  race,  the  same  unutterable 
sadness  of  premature  old  age  and  of  widespread  disease  among 
the  women. 

We  are  not  to  take  credit  to  ourselves,  however,  as  a  civiliza- 
tion humane  and  wise  in  this  matter.  We  are  doing  almost  as 
wicked  and  wasteful  a  thing  as  respects  the  girlhood  of  the  poorer 
classes  in  these  United  States  in  the  morning  of  the  twentieth 
century.  Read  again  what  we  do  to  our  young  girls  between  the 
ages  of  fourteen  and  twenty,  when  of  all  the  periods  of  life  for 
women  there  is  most  danger  of  premature  death  and  of  wasting 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT  543 

and  disabling  disease.1  Concerning  the  two  hundred  and  ninety- 
five  separate  employments  in  which  women  earn  wages  and  salary, 
as  recorded  in  the  census  of  1900,  two  facts  stand  out  prom- 
inently,—  namely,  the  youth  of  the  women  and  girls,  and  the 
low  quality  and  poor  pay  of  the  work  of  the  majority  among  them. 
Other  facts  are  coming  clearly  into  light,  baleful  in  their  signifi- 
cance, as  we  more  closely  study  conditions.  In  the  canning  fac- 
tories 2400  rapid  and  regular  motions  a  day  in  tin-cutting  for 
the  girls  employed ;  girls  sixteen  to  twenty  years  of  age,  and 
speeded  to  the  limit  of  supreme  exhaustion  in  this  race  to  keep 
ahead  of  the  other  workers.  In  the  confectionery  business,  3000 
chocolates  "dipped"  every  day  at  fever  heat  of  energy.  In  the 
cracker-making  trade,  the  girls  standing  or  walking  not  six  feet 
from  the  ovens  show  a  white  faintness  from  heat  and  hurry  as 
they  handle  a  hundred  dozen  a  day ;  and  "  can't  stand  the  work 
long,"  as  even  the  strongest  confess.  In  the  cigar-making  in- 
dustry 1400  "stogies"  a  day  worked  over  by  girls  seventeen  to 
twenty  years  of  age ;  and  not  only  that  but  children,  boys  and 
girls  from  five  to  twelve  years  old,  stripping  tobacco  as  helpers 
and  the  whole  work  so  exhausting  that  even  the  older  girls  say 
they  "can't  keep  the  pace  more  than  six  years."  In  the  garment 
trades,  the  sewing  machines  speeded  to  almost  incredible  limits, 
the  unshaded  electric  bulbs  and  the  swift  motion  of  the  needle 
giving  early  "  eyeblur "  and  a  nerve  strain  that  enables  the 
strongest  to  earn  only  five  to  six  dollars  a  week,  while  the  goal 
of  eight  dollars  won  by  a  ruinous  "  spurt "  only  crowds  down  the 
average  wage  by  cutting  "  piecework  "  prices.  And  in  this  trade 
"  custom  work  "  brings  the  unsanitary  tenement  sweatshop  into 
union  with  the  best  factories,  to  work  the  children  younger  and 
under  worse  conditions  and  leave  no  rest-time  for  youth  even  in 
the  home.  In  the  laundries  women  are  operating  machines  so 
heavy  that  their  whole  bodies  tremble  with  the  strain  of  their  use ; 
and  the  muscular  system,  drawn  upon  for  this  "  spasmodic  effort 
for  an  isolated  feat,"  repeated  as  rapidly  as  the  body  can  be 
forced  to  act,  under  the  spur  of  a  never-ceasing  pressure,  is  often 
that  of  young  girls,  many  of  them  under  sixteen  years  of  age. 

1  See  Edith  Abbott,  Women  in  Industry. 


544  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

In  the  metal  trades  10,000  "cores"  a  day  turned  out  after  two 
or  three  years'  apprenticeship,  and  still  the  young  girl  under 
twenty  is  most  in  evidence  in  the  bewilderingly  rapid  process. 
In  the  manufacture  of  "  caskets  "  and  other  articles  where  strong 
lacquer  is  used,  the  manufacturer  often  says  he  "can't  stand  it 
more  than  two  or  three  minutes  in  the  room  "  where  the  fumes 
of  the  preparation  are  worst,  but  his  girls  work  in  it  ten  hours  a 
day  for  the  pitiful  wage  of  nine  dollars  a  week,  called  "  good  pay 
for  women."  In  the  soapmaking  business  the  girls  must  wrap 
noo  cakes  of  soap  a  day  in  the  bad  air  and  worse  smells  of 
most  such  places  in  order  to  get  a  decent  wage.  The  "  telephone 
girl "  gets  many  a  harsh  criticism  ;  it  might  be  better  if  she  got 
a  little  more  attention  as  a  social  factor.  Her  age  is  seldom  over 
twenty ;  seventeen  to  eighteen  years  is  the  average.  Physicians 
tell  us  that  it  is  ruinous  to  the  nervous  system  to  do  this  exact- 
ing work  more  than  five  hours  a  day  even  with  an  hour's  rest, 
complete  and  in  the  best  possible  conditions,  between  each  two 
and  one-half  hours  of  service.  But  our  telephone  girls  work  their 
five  hours  in  continuous  service  and  if  after  four  or  five  years  of 
such  labor  they  "break  down,"  what  then  ?  In  mercantile  houses 
the  all-day  standing  which  is  the  rule  injures  girls  so  seriously 
that  physicians  continually  complain  about  it.  The  law  that 
requires  seats  in  department  stores  is  so  much  a  dead  letter  that 
the  girls  laugh  bitterly  at  any  question  concerning  its  enforce- 
ment. In  places  where  five  or  six  hundred  girls  are  employed 
nineteen  to  thirty  seats  may  be  provided ;  but  to  use  even  these 
may  cost  the  girl  her  position.  The  hours,  from  eight  to  five  or 
from  eight  to  six  o'clock,  and  the  low  wage  which  forbids  proper 
clothing  and  nourishment  if  wholly  depended  upon  for  self- 
support,  add  to  the  peril  of  the  shopgirl's  condition.  The  "  moral 
jeopardy  of  her  position,"  as  Miss  Butler1  calls  it,  is  also  a  factor 
of  sinister  suggestion,  when  we  remember  that  with  all  their  hard 
and  continuous  labor,  three  fifths  of  the  shopgirls  earn  less  than 
seven  dollars  a  week.  The  much  vaunted  "chivalry  of  men," 
the  proudly  assumed  "  reverence  for  womanhood "  paraded  in 
public  addresses  on  the  glory  and  moral  excellence  of  our  present 

1  Elizabeth  1!.  Butler,  Women  in  the  Trades. 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT  545 

civilization,  do  not  work  far  down  in  the  social  scale.  The  fact 
is  that  because  women  are  the  cheapest  of  laborers  and  because 
young  women  must  all  work  for  pay  between  their  school  life  and 
their  marriage  in  the  case  of  the  poverty-bound,  the  poorest-paid 
and  many  of  the  hardest  and  most  health-destroying  of  employ- 
ments are  given  them  as  almost  a  monopoly.  Nature  has  warned 
mankind  through  unnumbered  centuries,  since  the  human  intel- 
ligence has  been  able  to  perceive  cause  and  effect,  that  if  we 
wanted  strong  nations  we  must  have  strong  mothers,  and  if  we 
wanted  strong  mothers  we  must  safeguard  the  girls  from  over- 
work and  all  manner  of  economic  evils  :  but  we  still  turn  deaf 
ears  to  the  warning. 

In  circles  of  society  less  pressed  by  economic  need  we  misuse 
girlhood  in  many  other  ways.  The  pressure  upon  the  early  pre- 
cocity of  the  girl  in  school,  the  strain  of  "  society  "  functions  too 
elaborate  and  nerve-wearing  for  youth,  the  undercurrent  of  vulgar 
and  wicked  selling  of  maidenhood  in  legal  but  unholy  marriage 
to  the  highest  bidder  in  rank  and  money,  —  all  these  things 
despoil  the  precious  and  lovely  freedom  and  joy  of  the  potential 
mother.  Some  time  we  must  be  wiser  and  shield  and  protect,  as 
now  even  the  most  careful  parent  finds  it  almost  impossible  to  do 
alone  and  unaided  by  social  customs  and  ways  of  living,  what 
nature  has  asserted  by  her  most  solemn  commands  to  be  the  first 
right  of  human  beings  of  the  mother-sex,  namely,  a  happy  and 
natural  girlhood.  Given  that  for  the  majority  of  the  sex,  given 
the  right  use  of  the  period  of  marriage  and  maternity  not  only  as 
related  to  the  duty  to  the  family  but  also  as  that  may  be  a  prep- 
aration for  the  best  use  of  the  later  years,  then  indeed  would  the 
second  youth  of  women  show  such  fruitage  in  personal  values  and 
in  social  service  as  the  world  has  not  yet  seen.  .Then  would  it 
be  clearer,  even  to  dull  perception,  why  more  women  than  men 
live  to  old  age  and  why  more  women  than  men  "  keep  the  child- 
like in  the  larger  mind  "  and  hence  may  have  many  a  belated 
springtime  of  growth. 

The  moral  of  all  this  must  be  pressed  home  to  the  master 
forces  of  vocational  direction  and  control.  It  must  of  all  things 
be  emphasized  that  not  only  is  "teaching  woman's  organic  office 


546  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

in  the  world,"  but  that  married  women  and  mothers  have  done 
most  of  the  teaching  of  all  the  younger  children  in  all  the  past 
civilizations,  and  there  are  the  best  of  reasons  why  they  should 
continue  to  do  so.  Instead  of  penalizing  the  marriage  of  women 
teachers  the  public-school  management  of  the  United  States 
should  offer  a  premium  for  the  marriage  of  these  women  ;  espe- 
cially those  whose  proved  fitness  for  the  teacher's  office  presents 
the  first  diploma  in  the  curriculum  of  successful  motherhood. 
The  private  schools  now  utilize  such  women  both  as  heads  of 
schools  and  as  teachers.  The  premium  that  should  be  offered  by 
the  public-school  system  need  not  and  should  not  be  a  continu- 
ance in  the  school  work  under  the  same  exhausting  and  inexora- 
ble demands  which  are  met  by  the  unmarried  teacher,  who  works 
so  well  after  her  many  years  of  experience  in  "  the  system  "  while 
trying  so  heroically  to  change  and  improve  it.  The  premium 
given  the  married  woman  teacher,  with  children  or  of  whom 
society  may  expect  offspring  of  a  needed  kind,  should  be  in  free- 
dom of  choice  of  lines  of  work,  in  adjustable  hours,  and  in  all 
other  details  of  flexibility  of  service  needed  by  the  house-mother. 
Although  compensation  should  of  course  be  given,  the  scale  of 
wages  of  these  part-time  workers  should  not  disarrange  those 
schedules  which  secure  to  unmarried  teachers,  who  give  uninter- 
rupted service  for  a  long  career  and  who  constitute  the  permanent 
staff  in  every  school,  their  full  share  of  "  equal  pay  for  women 
for  equal  work  with  men  "  in  the  higher  competitions  of  profes- 
sional life.  Such  schedules  are  a  vital  need,  not  only  for  the  sake 
of  justice  but  for  the  right  use  of  those  exceptional  educators 
among  women  who,  whether  married  or  unmarried,  can  serve  as 
superintendents  and  heads  of  departments  in  the  highest  posi- 
tions. There  is  nothing  more  needed  in  education,  however, 
than  a  vastly  increased  teaching  force,  and  a  corresponding 
opportunity  to  modify  and  vary  the  grade  system,  especially  in 
the  elementary  schools,  to  suit  the  needs  of  a  wider  range  of 
child-capacity.  We  ought  to  have  two  or  three  part-time  married 
women  teachers  to  every  celibate  woman,  younger  or  older,  who 
gives  whole  service  to  the  public  schools.  Moreover,  the  care- 
taking  of  the  weak  and  ignorant  and  undeveloped,  the  moral 


THE  MODERN  WOMAN  MOVEMENT      547 

protection  of  children  and  youth  in  recreation  and  in  labor,  the 
succor  of  the  needy,  and  the  general  expression  of  social  control 
and  social  uplift,  these  are  woman's  special  functions  in  the 
social  order  and  have  ever  been  her  peculiar  responsibility.  The 
vital  need  in  these  fields  to-day  is  not  alone  for  a  minority  of 
trained  workers,  such  as  the  schools  for  social  workers  are  turn- 
ing out  each  year,  but  also  for  a  large  majority  of  citizens  devoted 
to  the  public  weal  and  able  and  willing  intelligently  to  carry  out 
and  perfect,  modify  and  balance  the  schemes  of  the  experts  and 
"  paid  workers  "  who  make  "  scientific  philanthropy  "  a  life  work. 
Women  will  doubtless  always  take  a  larger  share  in  this  part-time 
service  in  the  lines  indicated  than  men  can  do ;  and  older  women, 
those  in  the  third  stage  of  life,  are  now  entering  this  field  with 
enthusiasm.  As  volunteers  and  as  helpers,  paid  and  unpaid,  they 
are  doing  much  of  the  constructive  and  ameliorative,  the  reform- 
atory and  the  preventive  work  of  social  reform.  When,  however, 
women  enter  this  field  late  in  life,  or  after  a  merely  amateur  and 
impulsive  response  in  earlier  life  to  the  call  of  social  need,  they 
enter  by  a  vocational  leap,  as  it  were,  from  the  inner  to  the  outer 
circle  of  human  interests.  This  gives,  at  the  worst,  an  awkward 
meddling  with  established  rules  of  procedure  ;  and  at  best  fails  to 
give  highest  effectiveness.  Women  who  have  had  four  years  of 
college  and  two  years  of  special  training  in  a  teacher's  college 
or  school  of  philanthropy  and  then,  after  two  to  six  years  of 
professional  work  in  their  chosen  field,  marry  to  take  charge  of 
an  individual  home,  are  too  valuable  assets  of  educational  oppor- 
tunity to  be  left  without  social  pressure  and  financial  incentive  to 
continue  that  work  with  the  necessary  modifications.  The  same  is 
true  of  the  minister,  the  lawyer,  and  above  all  the  doctor  and  the 
nurse,  as  well  as  of  all  other  women  specialists  in  professional  labor. 
The  difficulties  of  the  woman  worker  who  marries  and  has 
children  increase  as  we  go  down  the  scale  through  commercial, 
clerical,  and  manual  employments ;  .but  they  are  not  insuperable ; 
and  the  ingenuity  of  industrial  mechanism  needed  for  the  higher 
utilization  of  the  paid  work  of  women  in  other  than  purely  pri- 
vate domestic  lines  waits  for  development  only  for  a  more  just 
perception  in  the  common  sense  regarding  women's  work-power. 


548  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

The  present  pressure  upon  the  wages  of  men  that  makes  so 
many  house-mothers  obliged  to  add  to  the  family  income  at  the 
worst  time  of  their  lives  for  economic  strain,  and  at  any  work 
they  can  get,  however  exploited  and  health-destroying,  is  no  solu- 
tion of  the  problem  ;  it  is  an  aggravation  of  it  dire  in  social 
results.  Real  solutions  of  social  problems  are  not  worked  out  by 
people  wholly  "under"  their  circumstances. 

With,  however,  a  true  solution  of  the  problems  of  womanhood, 
achieved  not  by  flights  of  fancy  but  by  patient  infinitesimal  efforts 
of  daily  living  in  which  no  inherited  or  present  duty  is  neglected, 
and  no  opportunity  for  shaping  toward  future  conditions  is 
ignored,  we  shall  gain  at  last  for  social  culture  in  all  lines,  and 
for  industry  in  many  forms,  a  needed  class  of  slowly  trained, 
slowly  apprenticed  workers  in  every  field  where  women  naturally 
excel ;  to  rise  finally  at  the  third  period  of  their  lives  to  positions 
of  command  where  women  are  now  most  needed.  This  will  mean 
new  ways  of  conserving  hitherto  exploited  capacities  and  gifts  of 
the  mass  of  mankind.  For  women  of  the  right  sort  and  the  right 
training,  shielded  by  men's  protection  and  care  from  the  heaviest 
economic  pressure  during  early  life  and  developed  in  personality 
by  the  special  demands  upon  them  in  the  home,  will  see  to  it 
when  they  arrive  at  their  rightful  place  of  control  that  neither 
professional  demand  nor  the  industrial  order  shall  take  such  a 
heavy  toll  from  life  itself  in  the  effort  to  make  a  living ! 

"  Old  men  for  counsel  ?  "  Yes,  surely,  now  as  of  old  ;  and  it 
is  well  for  humanity  that  it  learned  this  bit  of  social  wisdom  so 
early.  Old  women  for  new  work  for  the  race  ?  Yes,  surely ;  and 
well  will  it  be  for  human  progress  when  mankind  learns  this 
new  lesson  of  social  wisdom  and  makes  fitting  social  use  of  the 
postgraduate  mother,  eager  and  fresh  in  her  second  youth,  for  a 
new  pathfinding  for  the  feet  of  the  coming  generations  before 
she  draws  down  the  curtain  and  says  good  night. 


CHAPTER  XIII 


Plato's  view,  550.  —  Differences  in  the  mentality  of  the  sexes,  552.  —  Woman's 
education  —  a  man's  view,  562. — Woman's  education  —  a  woman's  view,  567. 

[Much  Of  the  limitation  of  women's  activity  and  of  the  suppres- 
sion of  her  freedom  of  thought  and  impulse,  which  has  come  to 
be  called,  after  Mill,  "the  subjection  of  women,"  has  been  due 
to  preconceived  and  erroneous  ideas  as  to  the  influence  of  the 
fact  of  sex  upon  the  nonsexual  functions  of  life.  One  of  the 
most  ill-used  terms  in  the  English  language  is  the  word  "  natural," 
especially  when  it  is  used  in  relation  to  sex.  People  speak  glibly 
of  this  or  that  characteristic  of  women,  or  men,  as  the  case  may 
be,  as  "  natural,"  meaning  thereby  that  the  trait  is  inborn  in  the 
individual  through  organic  heredity,  and  that  it  is  not  a  product 
of  response  to  a  given  environment.  It  is  difficult  to  realize  how 
great  are  the  differences  of  social  training,  of  environmental 
stimuli  in  general,  afforded  the  boy  and  the  girl.  Nowhere  has 
this  unscientific  and  superficial  mode  of  thought,  of  attributing  to 
nature  what  may  be  due  to  "  nurture,"  played  sadder  havoc  to 
the  cause  of  justice  and  progress  than  in  its  easy  assumption  of 
innate  and  ineradicable  mental  differences  between  the  sexes. 
There  are  perhaps  certain  a  priori  reasons,  such  as  the  physio- 
logical relation  of  the  mother  to  the  child,  why  we  might  look 
for  a  more  widely  diffused  and  active  sense  of  sympathy,  for 
instance,  in  women  than  in  men,  but  no  one  can  say  scientifically, 
on  the  basis  of  ordered  and  carefully  examined  inductive  evidence, 
that  important  natural  mental  differences  do,  or  do  not,  exist. 
Modern  scientific  psychology  has  made  but  the  veriest  beginnings 
of  a  study  of  this  problem,  and  the  general  tendency  is  to  rele- 
gate it  to  the  limbo  of  "academic"  questions  —  possibly  because 
of  the  almost  hopeless  nature  of  the  task  of  distinguishing  between 

549 


550  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

facts  that  are  natural,  the  result  of  organic  heredity,  and  those 
that  are  due  to  education,  using  that  term  in  the  broad  sense  of 
adaptation  to,  and  by,  a  social  environment.  Nevertheless,  no 
small  portion  of  society  is  organized,  and  carries  on  its  processes, 
upon  the  old  assumptions  of  the  inferior  intellectuality  and  ration- 
ality of  woman,  and  her  "  finer  sensibilities." 

Far  more  attention  is  still  given  to  the  policies  which  should 
govern  the  education  of  boys  and  men  than  is  given  to  the  edu- 
cation of  girls  and  women.  The  new  movement  for  vocational 
guidance,  which  fortunately  has  been  taken  up  for  girls  as  well 
as  for  boys,  as  well  as  the  growth  of  the  women's  colleges  and 
coeducational  institutions,  and  the  great  number  of  girls  in  the 
high  schools,  is  beginning  to  draw  more  attention  to  the  question 
of  the  proper  education  for  women.  We  are  thus  introduced  to 
a  most  interesting  and  socially  significant  opposition  of  ideals  for 
the  future  of  the  education  of  girls  and  women  in  this  country.] 

52.  PLATO  ON  THE  TALENTS  AND  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN1 

If  the  male  and  female  sex  appear  to  differ  in  reference  to  any 
art,  or  other  occupation,  we  shall  say  that  such  occupation  must 
be  appropriated  to  the  one  or  to  the  other  :  but  if  we  find  the 
differences  between  the  sexes  to  consist  simply  in  the  parts  they 
respectively  bear  in  the  propagation  of  the  species,  we  shall  assert 
that  it  has  not  yet  been  by  any  means  demonstrated  that  the 
difference  between  men  and  women  touches  our  purpose ;  on 
the  contrary  we  shall  still  think  it  proper  for  our  guardians  and 
their  wives  to  engage  in  the  same  pursuits. 

Pray  tell  us  whether,  when  you  say  that  one  man  possesses 
talents  for  a  particular  study,  and  that  another  is  without  them, 
you  mean  that  the  former  learns  it  easily,  the  latter  with  difficulty  ; 
and  that  the  one  with  little  instruction  can  find  out  much  for 
himself  in  the  subject  he  has  studied,  whereas  the  other  after 
much  teaching  and  practice  cannot  even  retain  what  he  has 
learned ;  and  that  the  mind  of  the  one  is  duly  aided,  that  of  the 
other  thwarted,  by  the  bodily  powers.  Are  not  these  the  only 

1  Adapted  from  "  The  Republic,"  sections  454-456. 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN  551 

marks  by  which  you  define  the  possession  and  the  want  of  natural 
talents  for  any  pursuit  ? 

Well,  then,  do  you  know  of  any  branch  of  human  industry  in 
which  the  female  sex  is  not  inferior  in  these  respects  to  the  male  ? 
or  need  we  go  to  the  length  of  specifying  the  art  of  weaving, 
and  the  manufacture  of  pastry  and  preserves,  in  which  women 
are  thought  to  excel,  and  in  which  their  discomfiture  is  most 
laughed  at  ?  In  almost  every  employment  the  one  sex  is  vastly 
superior  to  the  other.  There  are  many  women,  no  doubt,  who 
are  better  in  many  things  than  many  men.  I  conclude,  then, 
that  none  of  the  occupations  which  comprehend  the  ordering  of 
a  state  belong  to  women  as  women,  nor  yet  to  man  as  man  ;  but 
natural  gifts  are  to  be  found  here  and  there,  in  both  sexes  alike ; 
and,  so  far  as  her  nature  is  concerned,  the  woman  is  admissible 
to  all  pursuits  as  well  as  the  man  ;  though  in  all  of  them  the 
woman  is  weaker  than  the  man. 

Shall  we  then  appropriate  all  duties  to  men  and  none  to 
women  ?  On  the  contrary  we  shall  hold  that  one  woman  may 
have  talents  for  medicine,  and  another  be  without  them  ;  and 
that  one  may  be  musical  and  another  unmusical.  And  may  there 
not  be  a  love  of  knowledge  in  one  and  a  distaste  for  it  in  another  ? 
and  may  not  one  be  spirited  and  another  spiritless  ?  If  that  be  so, 
there  are  some  women  who  are  fit  and  others  who  are  unfit,  for 
the  office  of  guardians.  For  were  not  those  the  qualities  that  we 
selected,  in  the  case  of  the  men,  as  marking  their  fitness  for  that 
office  ?  Then  as  far  as  the  guardianship  of  the  state  is  concerned, 
there  is  no  difference  between  the  natures  of  the  man  and  of  the 
woman,  but  only  various  degrees  of  weakness  and  of  strength. 

Then  we  shall  have  to  select  duly  qualified  women  also,  to 
share  in  the, life  and  official  labors  of  the  duly  qualified  men; 
since  we  find  that  they  are  competent  to  the  work,  and  of  kindred 
nature  with  the  men. 

If  the  question  is  how  to  render  a  woman  fit  for  the  office  of 
guardian,  we  shall  not  have  one  education  for  men,  and  another 
for  women,  especially  as  the  nature  to  be  wrought  upon  is  the 
same  in  both  cases. 


552  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

53.    ARE   THERE   "NATURAL"   DIFFERENCES   IN   THE   MEN- 
TALITY OF  THE  SEXES?1 

We  may  now  bring  together  the  results  obtained  from  the 
various  fields,  and  ascertain  whether  or  not  any  broad  generali- 
zations with  reference  to  the  psychological  norms  of  men  and 
women  which  can  be  regarded  as  of  fundamental  importance 
have  been  reached. 

It  has  been  found  that  motor  ability  in  most  of  its  forms  is 
better  developed  in  men  than  in  women.  In  strength,  rapidity 
of  movement,  and  rate  of  fatigue,  they  have  a  very  decided 
advantage,  and  in  precision  of  movement  a  slight  advantage. 
These  four  forms  of  superiority  are  probably  all  expressions  of 
one  and  the  same  fact  —  the  greater  muscular  strength  of  men. 
In  the  formation  of  a  new  coordination  women  are  superior  to 
men.  The  greater  muscular  strength  of  men  is  a  universally 
accepted  fact.  There  has  been  more  or  less  dispute  as  to  which 
sex  displays  greater  manual  dexterity.  According  to  the  present 
results,  manual  dexterity  which  consists  in  the  ability  to  make  very 
delicate  and  minutely  controlled  movements  is  slightly  greater  in 
men ;  that  which  consists  in  the  ability  to  coordinate  movements 
rapidly  to  unforeseen  stimuli  is  clearly  greater  in  women. 

There  have  been  two  opposing  views  on  the  general  subject  of 
the  sensibility  of  the  sexes  ;  one  assigning  the  keener  senses  to 
men,  and  the  other  to  women.  They  have  been  based  either  on 
inadequate  experiment  in  a  few  fields  of  sensibility  or  on  general 
theoretical  considerations.  The  present  investigation  of  the  total 
field  of  sensibility  has  resulted  in  the  following  conclusions  re- 
garding thresholds  and  discriminative  sensibility  : 

TliresJwlds.  - — •  Women  have  lower  thresholds  in  the  recognition 
of  two  points  on  the  skin  ;  in  touch  ;  in  sweet,  salt,  sour,  and 
bitter  taste  ;  in  smell  ;  in  color ;  and  in  pain  through  pressure. 

1  By  Helen  B.  Thompson.  From  The  Mental  Traits  of  Sex,  pp.  169-182.  The 
University  of  Chicago  Press,  Chicago,  1903.  Dr.  Thompson  carried  out  rigid 
experiments  on  twenty-five  men  and  twenty-five  women,  all  students,  in  the 
psychological  laboratory  of  The  University  of  Chicago,  to  determine  whether 
there  were  measurable  differences,  and  if  so,  how  great,  in  the  mental  activities 
of  the  two  sexes.  The  pages  here  given  are  the  concluding  chapter  of  her  book. 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN  553 

Men  and  women  are  alike  in  respect  to  the  upper  and  lower  limits 
of  pitch.  Men  have  a  lower  threshold  in  the  perception  of  light. 

Discriminative  sensibility.  —  Women  have  finer  discrimination 
in  pitch  and  in  color.  Men  and  women  have  equal  discrimina- 
tion in  temperature,  in  odor,  and  in  passive  pressure.  Men  have 
finer  discrimination  in  lifted  weights  ;  in  sweet,  sour,  and  bitter 
taste ;  in  shades  of  gray ;  probably  in  areas  on  the  skin  (the  test 
on  this  subject  does  not  warrant  certainty)  ;  and  in  visual  areas. 

The  number  of  cases  in  which  the  advantage  is  on  the  side  of 
the  women  is  greater  than  the  number  of  cases  in  which  it  is  on 
the  side  of  the  men.  The  thresholds  are  on  the  whole  lower,  in 
women ;  discriminative  sensibility  is  on  the  whole  better  in  men. 
Those  sensor}'  judgments  into  which  sensations  of  movement 
enter  directly,  such  as  the  discrimination  of  lifted  weights  and  of 
visual  lines  and  areas,  are  somewhat  better  in  men.  All  these 
differences,  ho\vever,  are  slight. 

As  for  the  intellectual  faculties,  women  are  decidedly  superior  to 
men  in  memory,  and  possibly  more  rapid  in  associative  thinking. 
Men  are  probably  superior  in  ingenuity.  In  general  information 
and  intellectual  interests  there  is  no  difference  characteristic  of  sex. 

The  data  on  the  life  of  feeling  indicate  that  there  is  little,  if 
any,  sexual  difference  in  the  degree  of  domination  by  emotion, 
and  that  social  consciousness  is  more  prominent  in  men  and 
religious  consciousness  in  women. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  the  question  how  well  or  how  ill  these 
results  accord  with  the  prevailing  biological  view  of  the  mental 
differences  between  the  sexes. 

It  is  perhaps  not  fair  to  speak  of  a  prevailing  view  in  a  ques- 
tion regarding  which  dispute  is  so  rife ;  but  the  view  which 
seems  to  command  the  adherence  of  most  scientists  at  present  is 
that  advanced  by  Geddes  and  Thompson.1  It  is  worked  out  in 
some  detail  on  the  psychological  side  by  Fouillee.2  Brooks3  and 

1  Patrick  Geddes  and  J.  Arthur  Thompson,  The  Evolution  of  Sex.     London, 
1889. 

2  Alfred  Fouillee,  Temperament  et  caractere  selon  les  individus,  les  sexes  et 
les  races.    Paris,  1895. 

3  W.  K.  Brooks,  "  On  the  Development  of  Voluntary  Motor  Ability,"  American 
Journal  of  Psychology,  Vol.  V  (1892),  p.  269. 


554  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Patrick l  represent  the  same  tendency.  The  view  is  not  alto- 
gether free  from  contradictions,  nor  entirely  satisfactory  in  so  far 
as  it  pretends  to  be  a  theory  of  the  evolution  of  sex.  Leaving 
these  points  aside,  its  general  tenets  are  that  the  differentiation 
between  the  sexes  in  the  course  of  evolution  has  been  in  the 
direction  of  a  sort  of  division  of  labor,  the  male  assuming  the 
processes  of  nutrition  and  the  female  those  of  reproduction,  which 
has  made  women  more  anabolic  and  men  more  katabolic  in  physi- 
ological structure.  This  difference  is  displayed  in  its  most 
elementary  form  by  the  two  sexual  cells.  The  female  is  large 
and  immobile.  It  represents  stored  nutrition.  The  male  cell  is 
small  and  agile.  It  represents  expenditure  of  energy.  From 
these  fundamental  characteristics  the  social  and  psychological 
differences  can  be  deduced.  The  female  represents  the  conser- 
vation of  the  species  —  the  preservation  of  past  gains  made  by 
the  race.  Her  characteristics  are  continuity,  patience,  and  stability. 
Her  mental  life  is  dominated  by  integration.  She  is  skilled  in 
particular  ideas  and  in  the  application  of  generalizations  already 
obtained,  but  not  in  abstraction  or  the  formation  of  new  concepts. 
Since  woman  is  receptive,  she  possesses  keener  senses  and  more 
intense  reflexes  than  man.  Her  tendency  to  accumulate  nutrition 
brings  about  a  greater  development  of  the  viscera,  and,  since 
emotions  are  reflex  waves  from  the  viscera,  woman  is  more 
emotional  than  man.  The  male,  on  the  other  hand,  represents  the 
introduction  of  new  elements.  Males  arc  more  variable  than 
females  throughout  the  animal  kingdom.  Everywhere  we  find 
the  male  sex  adventurous  and  inventive.  Its  activities  are  char- 
acterized everywhere  by  impulsiveness  and  intensity,  rather  than 
by  patience  and  continuity.  Men  are  more  capable  of  intense 
and  prolonged  concentration  of  attention  than  women.  They  are 
less  influenced  by  feeling  than  women.  They  have  greater 
powers  of  abstraction  and  generalization. 

It  is  evident  that,  on  the  surface  at  least,  the  results  at  which 
we  have  arrived  accord  very  well  with  this  theory.  Men  did 
prove  in  our  experiments  to  have  better-developed  motor  ability 

1  (1.  T.  W.  Patrick,  "The  Psychology  of  Woman,"  Popular  Science  Monthly, 
Vol.  XLVII  (1895),  p.  209. 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN  555 

and  more  ingenuity.  Women  did  have  somewhat  keener  senses 
and  better  memory.  The  assertion  that  the  influence  of  emotion 
is  greater  in  the  life  of  women  found  no  confirmation.  Their 
greater  tendency  toward  religious  faith,  however,  and  the  greater 
number  of  superstitions  among  them,  point  toward  their  con- 
servative nature  —  their  function  of  preserving  established  beliefs 
and  institutions. 

But  before  we  accept  the  theory  advanced  as  the  correct  inter- 
pretation of  the  facts,  it  would  be  well  to  examine  a  little  more 
closely  the  evidence  on  which  it  rests,  and  consider  whether  or 
not  there  is  any  other  possible  interpretation  with  equal  claims 
to  a  hearing. 

In  the  first  place,  this  theory,  in  so  far  as  its  deductions  about 
mental  characteristics  are  derived  as  necessary  conclusions  from 
the  nature  of  the  genital  cells,  seems  to  rest  on  somewhat  far- 
fetched analogies  only.  The  sets  of  characteristics  deduced  for  the 
sexes  may  be  correct,  but  the  method  of  deriving  them  is  not 
very  convincing,  nor  is  the  set  of  characteristics  derived  for  each 
sex  entirely  consistent.  Women  are  said  to  represent  concentra- 
tion, patience,  and  stability  in  emotional  life.  One  might  logically 
conclude  that  prolonged  concentration  of  attention  and  unbiased 
generalization  would  be  their  intellectual  characteristics.  But  these 
are  the  very  characteristics  assigned  to  men.  Women,  though 
more  stable  in  their  emotions,  are  more  influenced  by  them,  and, 
although  they  represent  patience  and  concentration,  they  are  in- 
capable of  prolonged  efforts  of  attention.  Men,  whose  activity  is 
essentially  intermittent,  and  whose  emotions  are  greater  in  variety 
and  more  unstable,  are  characterized  by  prolonged  strains  of 
attention  and  unbiased  judgment.  It  may  be  true,  but  the  proof 
for  it  does  not  appeal  to  one  as  very  cogent.  In  fact,  after  read- 
ing the  several  expositions  of  this  theory,  one  is  left  with  a  strong 
impression  that,  if  the  authors'  views  as  to  the  mental  differences 
of  sex  had  been  different,  they  might  as  easily  have  derived  a 
very  different  set  of  characteristics.  There  is  truth  as  well  as 
humor  in  Lourbet's J  suggestion  that,  if  the  nature  of  the  genital 
cells  were  reversed,  it  would  be  a  little  easier  for  this  school  of 

1  Jacques  Lourbet,  La  Femme  devant  la  science  contemporaire.    Paris,  1896. 


556  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

evolutionists  to  derive  the  characteristics  of  sex  with  which  they 
finally  come  out.  In  that  case,  the  female  cell,  smaller  and  more 
agile  than  the  male,  would  represent  woman  with  her  smaller 
size,  her  excitable  nervous  system,  and  her  incapacity  for  sus- 
tained effort  of  attention ;  while  the  male  cell,  large,  calm,  and 
self-contained,  would  image  the  size  and  strength,  the  impartial 
reason,  and  the  easy  concentration  of  attention  of  men. 

The  fact  which  is  put  forward  to  prove  the  greater  natural 
ingenuity  and  inventiveness  of  man  is  his  greater  variability. 
Lombroso,  without  more  ado,  asserts  that  the  male  is  everywhere, 
and  in  all  respects,  more  variable  than  the  female,  and  that  this 
fact  alone  is  sufficient  to  prove  his  greater  creative  ability.  The 
doctrine  has  been  unquestioningly  adopted  by  all  the  advocates 
of  this  theory.  It  is  called  upon  to  explain  the  occurrence  of 
more  individuals  of  unusual  mental  capacity,  both  above  and  below 
the  norm,  as  well  as  to  account  for  the  greater  versatility  and 
inventiveness  of  the  male  mind. 

Unfortunately  for  the  theory,  the  latest  researches  on  the  ques- 
tion of  variability  have  failed  to  sustain  it.  Pearson1  subjects  the 
previous  methods  of  measuring  variability  to  criticism,  and  finds 
them  very  faulty.  He  insists  that  pathological  variations  are  not 
a  fair  test  of  average  variability  in  the  sexes,  because  many  dis- 
eases have  a  tendency  to  attack  one  sex  rather  than  the  other. 
The  true  measure  of  the  variability  which  must  be  regarded  as 
important  in  evolution  is,  he  says,  the  amount  of  normal  variation 
found  in  organs  or  characteristics  not  of  a  secondary  sexual  char- 
acter. The  variation,  however,  of  any  organ  must  be  judged  by 
its  relative  departure  from  its  mean,  not,  as  has  formerly  been 
done,  by  its  absolute  variation,  or  by  its  variation  relatively  to 
some  other  organ.  Taking  all  the  available  physical  measure- 
ments of  human  beings  as  a  basis  for  his  calculation,  Pearson 
finds  the  total  trend  of  his  observations  to  be  toward  a  some- 
what greater  tendency  to  variation  in  women  than  in  men.  He 
concludes  that  "  the  principle  that  man  is  more  variable  than 
woman  must  be  put  aside  as  a  pseudo-scientific  superstition  until 

1  Karl  Pearson,  The  Chances  of  Death,  Vol.  I,  chap,  viii  ("Variation  in  Man 
and  Woman"),  p.  256.  London,  1^97. 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN  557 

it  has  been  demonstrated  in  a  more  scientific  manner  than  has 
hitherto  been  attempted." 

While  it  may  still  prove  true  that  men  are  intellectually  more 
variable  than  women,  it  cannot  be  deduced  directly  from  the  uni- 
versally greater  variability  of  man.  The  fact  is  often  held  to  be 
proved  from  the  greater  prevalence  of  both  genius  and  imbecility 
among  men,  but,  as  Pearson  points  out,  these  are  both  forms 
of  abnormal  variation.  It  is  perfectly  conceivable  that  the  class 
which  presented  the  greatest  number  of  abnormalities  in  a  char- 
acter might  not  be  the  class  which  displayed  the  widest  normal 
variations  of  that  character. 

But  even  though  it  could  be  shown  that  men  are  intellectually 
more  variable  than  women,  it  is  still  difficult  to  see  why  this 
would  give  a  basis  for  the  statement  that  inventiveness  and  abil- 
ity to  arrive  at  new  generalizations  are  characteristic  of  the  male 
mind  as  opposed  to  the  female.  It  would,  if  true,  lead  us  to  ex- 
pect a  greater  number  of  intellectually  inferior  and  of  intellectually 
superior  individuals  belonging  to  the  male  sex.  In  so  far  as  great 
originality  is  characteristic  of  exceptional  mental  ability,  it  would 
lead  us  to  expect  that  the  greatest  discoveries  and  inventions 
should  come  from  these  exceptional  individuals.  But  that  is  not 
at  all  the  same  thing  as  saying  that  originality  and  inventiveness 
are  characteristic  of  the  male  mind  as  a  whole,  in  opposition  to 
the  female  mind,  as  a  whole.  This  statement  assumes  not  merely 
greater  variability  of  mind  in  general,  but  the  presence  of  a 
variation  in  a  given  direction. 

The  biological  theory  of  psychological  differences  of  sex  is  not 
in  a  condition  to  compel  assent.  While  it  is  true,  therefore,  that 
the  present  investigation  tends  to  support  the  theory,  it  is  just  as 
true  that  the  uncertain  basis  of  the  theory  itself  leaves  room  for 
other  explanations  of  the  facts,  if  there  are  other  satisfactory  ways 
of  explaining  them. 

In  considering  the  question  whether  or  not  there  is  any  other 
explanation  for  the  facts  in  the  case,  it  is  important  to  remember 
that  the  make-up  of  any  adult  individual  cannot  be  attributed 
entirely  to  inherited  tendency.  The  old  question  of  the  relative 
importance  of  heredity  and  environment  in  the  final  outcome  of 


558  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  individual  must  be  taken  into  consideration.  Although  the 
timeworn  controversy  is  far  from  satisfactory  settlement,  the  re- 
sults of  recent  observation  on  individual  development  have  tended 
to  emphasize  more  and  more  the  extreme  importance  of  environ- 
ment. The  sociological  experiments  in  which  very  young  children 
from  the  criminal  classes  have  been  placed  in  good  surroundings, 
with  no  knowledge  of  their  antecedents,  have  shown  that  such 
children  usually  develop  into  good  members  of  society.  The  entire 
practical  movement  of  sociology  is  based  on  the  firm  conviction 
that  an  individual  is  very  vitally  molded  by  his  surroundings,  and 
that  even  slight  modifications  may  produce  important  changes  in 
character. 

The  suggestion  that  the  observed  psychological  differences  of 
sex  may  be  due  to  difference  in  environment  has  often  been  met 
with  derision,  but  it  seems  at  least  worthy  of  unbiased  considera- 
tion. The  fact  that  very  genuine  and  important  differences  of 
environment  do  exist  can  be  denied  only  by  the  most  superficial 
observer.  Even  in  our  own  country,  where  boys  and  girls  are 
allowed  to  go  to  the  same  schools  and  to  play  together  to  some 
extent,  the  social  atmosphere  is  different,  from  the  cradle.  Dif- 
ferent toys  are  given  them,  different  occupations  and  games  are 
taught  them,  different  ideals  of  conduct  are  held  up  before  them. 
The  question  for  the  moment  is  not  at  all  whether  or  not  these 
differences  in  education  are  right  and  proper  and  necessary,  but 
merely  whether  or  not,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  they  exist,  and,  if  so, 
what  effect  they  have  on  the  individuals  who  are  subjected  to  them. 

The  difference  in  physical  training  is  very  evident.  Boys  are 
encouraged  in  all  forms  of  exercise  and  in  out-of-door  life,  while 
girls  are  restricted  in  physical  exercise  at  a  very  early  age.  Only 
a  few  forms  of  exercise  are  considered  ladylike.  Rough  games 
and  violent  exercise  of  all  sorts  are  discouraged.  Girls  are  kept 
in  the  house  and  taught  household  occupations.  The  development 
of  physical  strength  is  not  held  up  to  girls  as  an  ideal,  while  it  is 
made  one  of  the  chief  ambitions  of  boys. 

While  it  is  improbable  that  all  the  difference  of  the  sexes  with 
regard  to  physical  strength  can  be  attributed  to  persistent  dif- 
ference in  training,  it  is  certain  that  a  large  part  of  the  difference 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN  559 

is  explicable  on  this  ground.  The  great  strength  of  savage  women 
and  the  rapid  increase  in  strength  in  civilized  women,  wherever 
systematic  physical  training  has  been  introduced,  both  show  the 
importance  of  this  factor.  When  we  consider  other  forms  of 
motor  ability  than  mere  muscular  force,  such  as  quickness  of  reac- 
tion and  accuracy  of  coordination,  it  seems  very  probable  that 
mere  differences  of  physical  training  are  ample  to  account  for 
these  differences  of  sex.  While  it  seems  to  be  true  that  slower 
rates  of  movement  and  decreased  accuracy  of  coordination  do 
result  from  greatly  inferior  physical  strength,  it  is  not  true  that 
the  correlation  is  quantitatively  a  close  one.  Even  with  wide 
differences  in  muscular  force,  the  difference  in  motor  ability 
is  comparatively  slight.  Where  the  differences  in  strength  are 
slight,  we  have  no  reason  to  expect  differences  in  motor  ability 
on  that  ground. 

When  we  consider  the  other  important  respect  in  which  men 
are  supposed  to  be  superior  to  women  —  ingenuity  or  inventive- 
ness—  we  find  equally  important  differences  in  social  surround- 
ings which  would  tend  to  bring  about  this  result.  Boys  are 
encouraged  to  individuality.  They  are  trained  to  be  independent 
in  thought  and  action.  This  is  the  ideal  of  manliness  held  up 
before  them.  They  are  expected  to  understand  the  use  of  tools 
and  machinery,  and  encouraged  to  experiment  and  make  things 
for  themselves.  Girls  are  taught  obedience,  dependence,  and 
deference.  They  are  made  to  feel  that  too  much  independence 
of  opinion  or  action  is  a  drawback  to  them  —  not  becoming  or 
womanly.  A  boy  is  made  to  feel  that  his  success  in  life,  his 
place  in  the  world,  will  depend  upon  his  ability  to  go  ahead  with 
his  chosen  occupation  on  his  own  responsibility,  and  to  accom- 
plish something  new  and  valuable.  No  such  social  spur  is 
applied  to  girls.  Royce1  in  his  article  on  the  psychology  of 
invention  says  : 

Only  heredity  can  account  for  the  very  wide  differences  between  clever  men 
and  stupid  men,  or  explain  why  men  of  genius  exist  at  all.  But  the  minor  and 
still  important  inventiveness  of  the  men  of  talent,  the  men  of  the  second  grade, 

1  Josiah  Royce,  "  The  Psychology  of  Invention,"  Psychological  Revieiv,  Vol.  V 
(1898),  p.  113. 


560  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

is  somehow  due  to  a  social  stimulation  which  sets  their  habits  varying  in  differ- 
ent directions.  And  this  stimulation  is  of  the  type  which  abounds  in  periods 
of  individualism.  .  .  .  For  once  more,  the  primary  character  of  the  social  in- 
fluences to  which  we  are  exposed  is  that,  within  limits,  they  set  us  to  imitating 
models ;  they  tend  to  make  us  creatures  of  social  routine,  slaves  of  the  mob,  or 
obedient  servants  of  the  world  about  us.  ...  Inventions  thus  seem  to  be  the 
results  of  the  encouragement  of  individuality. 

If  one  applies  these  words  to  the  question  of  the  relative  in- 
ventiveness of  the  sexes,  and  realizes  the  wide  differences  in  social 
influence  which  still  exist  even  in  a  community  where  women 
have  more  freedom  and  more  education  than  anywhere  else  in 
the  world,  it  seems  rash  to  assume  that  the  observed  difference 
in  inventiveness  represents  a  genuine  and  fundamental  sexual 
difference  of  mind.  The  fact  that  the  difference  revealed  by  ex- 
periment is  so  slight  in  men  and  women  whose  educations  have 
been  as  nearly  alike  as  those  of  students  in  a  coeducational 
university,  tends  to  throw  further  doubt  on  the  fundamental 
importance  of  this  distinction.  The  very  brief  period  in  which 
women  have  been  given  any  systematic  education,  or  any  freedom 
of  choice  in  occupation,  makes  it  impossible  to  decide  the  ques- 
tion on  the  basis  of  previous  achievement. 

The  same  social  influences  which  have  tended  to  retard  the 
development  of  motor  ability  and  of  inventiveness  in  women 
would  tend  to  develop  keenness  of  sense  and  the  more  repro- 
ductive mental  processes,  such  as  memory.  The  question  is 
largely  one  of  the  distribution  of  attention.  A  large  part  of  a 
boy's  attention  goes  toward  his  activities  —  the  learning  of  new 
movements,  the  manipulating  of  tools,  the  making  of  contrivances 
of  various  sorts.  A  girl's  less  active  existence  must  be  filled 
with  some  other  sort  of  conscious  process.  The  only  possibility 
is  that  sensory  and  perceptual  processes  should  be  more  promi- 
nent. In  some  cases  the  special  training  of  girls  tends  directly 
toward  the  development  of  a  special  sense.  This  is  notably  true 
in  color,  and  perhaps  has  some  influence  in  taste.  On  the  more 
purely  intellectual  level,  it  is  only  natural  that  in  the  absence  of 
a  sufficient  social  spur  toward  originality  and  inventiveness,  they 
should  depend  more  upon  memory  for  their  supply  of  ideas.  It 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN  561 

is  easier  for  any  individual  to  learn  someone  else's  ideas  than 
to  think  out  his  own.  Every  teacher  has  to  struggle  against  the 
tendency  to  memorize  merely,  and  to  endeavor  in  every  way  to 
stimulate  original  thought  and  help  pupils  to  form  the  habit 
of  doing  their  own  thinking.  It  is  no  great  matter  of  surprise 
that  in  the  absence  of  social  stimulus  toward  originality  of 
thought,  women  should  have  tended,  from  inertia,  to  stay  in  the 
realm  of  reproductive  thinking. 

It  will  probably  be  said  that  this  view  of  the  case  puts  the  cart 
before  the  horse  —  that  the  training  and  social  surroundings  of 
the  sexes  are  different  because  their  natural  characteristics  are 
different.  It  will  be  said  that  a  boy  is  encouraged  to  activity 
because  he  is  naturally  active  —  that  he  is  given  tools  instead  of 
a  doll  because  he  is  naturally  more  interested  in  tools  than  in 
dolls.  But  there  are  many  indications  that  these  very  interests 
are  socially  stimulated.  A  small  boy  with  an  older  sister  and  no 
brothers  is  very  sure  to  display  an  ambition  to  have  dolls.  It  is 
in  most  cases  quenched  early  by  ridicule,  but  it  is  evident  that  a 
boy  must  be  taught  what  occupations  are  suited  to  boys.  The 
sorrows  of  a  small  girl  with  brothers  because  she  is  not  allowed 
to  run  and  race  with  the  boys  and  take  part  in  their  sports  and 
games  have  frequently  been  recounted.  If  it  were  really  a  funda- 
mental difference  of  instincts  and  characteristics  which  determined 
the  difference  of  training  to  which  the  sexes  are  subjected,  it 
would  not  be  necessary  to  spend  so  much  effort  in  making  boys 
and  girls  follow  the  lines  of  conduct  proper  to  their  sex.  The 
more  probable  interpretation  of  the  facts  is  that  the  necessities 
of  social  organization  have  in  the  past  brought  about  a  division 
of  labor  between  the  sexes,  the  usefulness  of  which  is  evident. 
Social  ideals  have  been  developed  in  connection  with  this  eco- 
nomic necessity,  and  still  persist. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  the  question  whether  or  not 
the  conditions  of  social  organization  still  demand  the  same  divi- 
sion of  labor,  and  make  the  preservation  of  the  traditional  ideals 
for  the  sexes  necessary  to  the  good  of  society.  If  such  is  the 
case,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  present  state  of  affairs  will  persist. 
There  are,  as  everyone  must  recognize,  signs  of  a  radical  change 


562  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

in  the  social  ideals  of  sex.  The  point  to  be  emphasized  as  the 
outcome  of  this  study  is  that,  according  to  our  present  light,  the 
psychological  differences  of  sex  seem  to  be  largely  due,  not  to 
difference  of  average  capacity,  nor  to  difference  in  type  of  mental 
activity,  but  to  differences  in  the  social  influences  brought  to  bear 
on  the  developing  individual  from  early  infancy  to  adult  years. 
The  question  of  the  future  development  of  the  intellectual  life  of 
women  is  one  of  social  necessities  and  ideals,  rather  than  of  the 
inborn  psychological  characteristics  of  sex. 

54.   WOMAN'S  EDUCATION— A  FORECAST1 

When  I  was  invited  to  speak  here  it  was  suggested  to  me  that  I 
say  something  about  the  future  of  the  higher  education  of  women ; 
and  that  task  I  gladly  accepted. 

We  cannot  tell  much  about  the  future  except  as  we  study  the 
past  and  the  present ;  and  therefore  the  first  thing  I  want  to  do 
is  to  state  as  clearly  as  I  can  what  seems  to  me  to  have  been 
accomplished  in  the  last  thirty-five  years  concerning  the  higher 
education  of  women  in  our  country.  I  remember  very  well  the 
beginnings.  I  remember  the  doubts  which  accompanied  those 
beginnings  —  doubts  in  which  your  president  has  just  intimated 
that  I  might  possibly  have  shared. 

Three  doubts,  at  least,  fundamental  in  their  nature,  important 
with  regard  to  the  immediate  success  of  the  higher  education  of 
women,  and  important,  certainly,  with  regard  to  their  future,  seem 
to  me  to  have  been  resolved.  Three  distinct  apprehensions  con- 
cerning the  effect  of  the  higher  education  upon  women  seem  to 
me  to  have  been  dissipated,  to  have  been  removed. 

In  the  first  place,  there  was  perfectly  sincere  doubt  (because 
there  was  very  little  experience  to  go  upon)  whether  young  women 
were  as  capable  as  young  men  of  receiving  what  was  then  called 
the  higher  education  —  whether  young  women  had  the  capacity 
to  master  by  study  what  were  the  traditional  subjects  of  what  was 
called  higher  education. 

1  By  Charles  W.  Eliot.  From  the  Magazine  of  the  Association  of  Collegiate 
Alumna,  February  (1908),  pp.  101-105. 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN  563 

Now  that  doubt  has  been  removed.  We  have  learned  by  actual 
trial  that  young  women  can  learn  all  the  more  difficult  subjects 
of  education  just  as  well  as  young  men  ;  and  there  is  some  evi- 
dence to  show  that  on  the  average  they  will  master  those  subjects 
better  than  the  average  young  men.  Some  people  think  that  is 
because  they  are  brighter ;  other  people  think  it  is  because  they 
are  more  conscientious  and  diligent.  But,  whatever  the  reason, 
the  fact  has  been  established  that  young  women  can  take  college 
subjects  and  deal  with  them  just  as  well  as  young  men  can.  That 
is  a  good  deal  to  have  learned  in  a  single  generation.  And  one  ad- 
vantage of  having  already  learned  that  is  that  the  women's  colleges 
need  no  longer  copy  absolutely  the  programs  for  young  men's 
colleges.  Relief  from  that  necessity  ought  to  produce  very  fav- 
orable changes  in  women's  colleges  during  the  next  twenty  years. 

The  fact  is  that  it  was  a  worthy  motive  which  impelled  the 
managers  of  women's  colleges,  at  first,  to  copy  abjectly  the  pro- 
grams for  young  men.  The  leaders  wanted  to  prove  just  the 
thing  that  has  been  proved  —  that  young  women  were  just  as 
good  as  young  men  for  those  studies,  and  for  that  order  of  studies, 
and  to  that  limit  of  studies.  That  having  been  proved,  women's 
colleges  are  now  free  to  arrange  for  an  education  for  women  which 
is  specially  adapted  to  the  needs  of  women.  I  look  forward,  there- 
fore, to  the  excellent  progress  of  the  women's  colleges  of  the 
United  States  in  this  respect  during  the  next  twenty  years. 

A  second  point  of  serious  apprehension  existed  thirty-five  years 
ago.  It  was  feared  that  if- young  women  of  eighteen  years  of  age 
or  so  studied  in  colleges  three  or  four  years,  such  study  would 
have  serious  ill  effect  on  their  health  and  on  their  fitness  for 
their  natural  functions  in  after  life.  This  apprehension  was  felt 
by  many  physicians,  and  warmly  expressed. 

For  a  whole  generation  we  have  been  trying  the  experiment; 
and  the  result  is  perfectly  clear.  Those  apprehensions  have  not 
been  justified.  It  is  apparent  that  young  women  can  work  three 
or  four  years,  between  eighteen  and  twenty-two,  not  only  without 
impairing  their  physical  vigor,  but  all  the  time  improving  it,  if 
they  live  wisely  and  under  right  conditions.  That  is  a  good  deal 
to  have  learned  in  a  single  generation ;  but  the  record  is  made. 


564  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

And,  thirdly,  there  was  a  strong  apprehension  felt  by  many 
excellent  people,  by  many  men  who  loved  and  venerated  the 
women  who  had  brought  them  up,  who  had  lived  with  them,  who 
had  brought  up  their  children,  that  in  this  process  of  the  higher 
education  of  women,  young  women  would  be  denaturized.  They 
admitted  that  young  men  were  not  denaturized  in  any  way  by  the 
higher  education  at  college,  but  they  thought  there  was  a  serious 
chance  that  young  women  would  be  altered  in  their  nature,  in 
their  feminine  nature,  by  this  process  of  a  higher  education. 

It  has  turned  out  that  a  young  woman  who  studies  in  college 
from  eighteen  to  twenty-two  is  no  more  altered  in  her  nature 
than  is  a  young  man  who  goes  through  the  same  process.  It 
takes  a  great  deal  more  than  that  to  alter  the  nature  of  woman  ! 

I  suppose  this  apprehension  was  based  upon  the  fact  that 
women  seem,  at  least  to  men,  more  tender,  fragile,  delicate,  than 
men  ;  and  therefore  it  was  feared  that  they  would  be  more  easily 
bruised  or  coarsened  than  men  ;  that  the  kind  of  public  life,  so 
to  speak,  in  large  groups  would  have  some  tendency  to  deprive 
them  of  their  natural  delicacy,  refinement,  and  tenderness.  It 
has  not  turned  out  so ;  and  everybody  recognizes  that  it  has  not 
turned  out  so ;  and  here,  again,  is  a  considerable  achievement 
for  a  single  generation.  A  groundless  fear  has  been  dismissed. 
And  still  Dr.  Williams  tells  us  that  the  professions  have  not  been 
invaded  by  women,  and  that  the  occupations  they  have  entered 
upon,  the  fields  they  have  vanquished,  were  more  or  less  unex- 
pected occupations  and  fields  and  professions ;  that  the  anticipa- 
tions of  the  friends  of  the  higher  education  of  women  have  not 
been  realized  any  more  than  the  apprehensions  of  the  foes  of 
that  education. 

Looking  forward  to  the  future  I  shall  venture  to  offer  a  partial 
explanation  of  the  phenomena  to  which  Dr.  Williams  alluded.  If 
\ve  could  say  in  regard  to  the  education  of  young  men  that  that 
education  should  be  directed  always  to  the  one  particular  occupa- 
tion which  the  young  men  were  perfectly  sure  to  engage  in,  we 
should  simplify  very  much  the  education  of  young  men.  We  can- 
not say  that.  After  the  college  education  of  young  men  is  over 
they  scatter  into  an  enormous  variety  of  occupations  and  pursuits ; 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN  565 

and  the  higher  education  for  young  men  has  not  the  advantage 
of  preparing  a  very  great  majority  of  them  for  a  single  calling. 
I  submit  that  the  higher  education  for  young  women  ought  to 
avail  itself  of  that  very  great  advantage.  The  great  majority  of 
women  go  out  into  the  world  to  a  single  occupation.  The  married 
women  bear  and  rear  children ;  the  unmarried,  though  they  do 
not  bear,  bring  them  up.  The  result  is  that  the  immense  majority 
of  women  go  into  the  one  single  occupation  of  rearing  children. 

Why  has  not  that  advantage  been  seized  upon  in  the  higher 
education  of  women  ?  Because  that  single  occupation  has  not 
generally  been  regarded  as  an  intellectual  occupation.  I  venture 
to  think  that  is  one  of  the  greatest  mistakes  civilized  men  and 
women  have  ever  committed.  The  one  great  occupation  of  women 
is  the  most  intellectual  occupation  there  is  in  the  world.  It  calls, 
and  calls  loudly,  and  often  calls  in  vain,  for  carefully  trained 
mental  powers,  as  well  as  great  moral  powers.  Let  me  endeavor 
to  justify  my  statement  that  this  main  occupation  of  women  is  in 
a  high  degree  an  intellectual  one  ;  and  I  do  not  confine  my  view 
to  fortunately  placed  women,  as  the  world  thinks.  I  say  that  the 
normal  occupation  of  women  is  a  high  intellectual  one  in  all  walks 
of  life ;  that  in  the  lowest  walks  of  life  the  occupation  of  the 
woman,  fairly  done,  is  higher  than  the  occupation  of  the  corre- 
sponding man  ;  and  that  the  same  ought  to  be  true,  and  often  is 
true,  of  the  higher  walks  of  life. 

Think  of  the  opportunities  of  applying  all  sorts  of  knowledge 
acquired.  The  mother  of  five  or  six  children  has  to  follow  the 
development  of  these  children  up  to  twenty  or  twenty-five  years 
of  age,  which  is  a  wonderful  training  in  itself  for  that  mother. 
Ordinarily  it  is  the  mother  that  does  the  training,  rather  than  the 
father  ;  and  this  training  lasts  twenty  years,  and  takes  effect  upon 
a  group  of  children  ordinarily  very  unlike  in  capacity,  powers,  dis- 
position. The  group  calls  for  all  the  mother's  power  of  observa- 
tion and  discrimination  in  perceiving  the  diversities  in  the  children. 
What  a  power  a  loving  mother  has  to  train  all  her  children's 
minds,  to  bring  them  up  to  a  love  of  reading  and  to  feed  that 
love.  In  family  government  there  is  a  great  deal  of  mind  as 
well  as  character.  It  is  impossible,  for  instance,  to  be  just,  daily, 


566  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

hourly,  by  the  moment,  unless  to  clear  insight  and  strong  moral 
perception  there  be  joined  sound  thinking.  Yet  there  is  no  more 
precious  attribute  of  the  mother  and  the  trainer  than  justice. 

Think  how  many  arts  and  sciences  can  be  applied  day  by  day 
in  the  conduct  of  a  family.  Think  what  the  world  lacks  in  this 
respect  —  the  material  knowledge  to  be  applied  in  the  bringing- 
up  of  a  family.  There  is  a  deal  to  be  done  in  that  direction  ;  and 
the  women  of  the  higher  education  are  the  best  fitted  to  do  it. 

I  say,  therefore,  that  this  normal  occupation  of  women  should 
be  the  main  object  of  the  training  supplied  in  the  higher  educa- 
tion of  women.  It  has  not  been  thought  of  in  that  way.  The 
colleges  for  men  have,  in  some  respects,  given  a  perverted  view 
of  the  object  of  the  higher  education,  particularly  during  the  last 
twenty  years.  They  have  been  too  much  inclined  to  develop  the 
material,  professional,  vocational  objects ;  whereas,  the  main  ob- 
ject is  that  cultivation  which  prepares  a  man  for  discharging  the 
duties  of  life,  not  only  with  accuracy  and  justice  and  competent 
knowledge,  but  with  enjoyment,  with  happiness.  That  is  the  ob- 
ject that  should  be  kept  before  young  women  in  their  colleges  — 
the  acquisition  of  the  powers  which  will  enable  a  woman  to  dis- 
charge well  her  main  function  in  life,  not  only  with  accuracy  and 
justice,  but  with  enjoyment,  bringing  forth  happiness  for  herself 
as  well  as  for  her  family. 

The  main  object  of  the  higher  education  of  women  has  not 
been  kept  sufficiently  in  view.  Of  course  there  are  objects,  plenty 
of  them  — •  training  for  the  professions,  training  for  all  the  chari- 
ties and  the  other  works  that  Dr.  Williams  has  described  to  you, 
training  for  all  that  enjoyment  and  usefulness  that  Professor 
Clemen  described  in  his  discourse  on  art  and  the  artistic  spirit 
and  the  contribution  of  the  artistic  spirit  toward  all  the  activities 
of  a  nation.  It  is  woman  to  whom  falls,  in  greater  part,  the 
training  of  the  population  in  the  sense  of  beauty  and  in  the  worth 
of  beauty.  Who  keeps  the  flowers  blooming  in  the  average  house 
lot  ?  Who  fills  the  southern  window  with  plants  in  tin  cans  and 
broken  pieces  of  pottery  ?  Who  engages  the  florist  to  keep  the 
rich  houses  filled  with  flowers  through  all  the  season  ?  For  whom 
are  all  the  beautiful  objects  in  the  rich  home  procured  and  set 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN  567 

forth  ?  Always  by  and  for  the  woman.  Who  teaches  the  little 
children  to  enjoy  the  beauties  of  nature  and  of  art  ?  Always,  or 
almost  always,  the  woman. 

I  look  forward  therefore  to  the  future  of  the  higher  education 
for  women  as  a  great  influence  in  the  perfecting  of  family  life, 
of  home  life,  of  household  joy  and  good.  It  has  been  perfectly 
natural  that  the  higher  education  of  women  should  have  been 
directed  toward  bringing  women  into  new  occupations.  That  was 
one  of  the  ambitions  of  the  leaders,  and  particularly  to  bring  them 
into  the  professions  —  the  professions  as  men  have  made  them. 
Natural,  I  say  ;  inevitable,  perhaps.  But  wiser  ways  and  methods 
will  come  into  play,  because  it  is  not  the  chief  happiness  or  the 
chief  end  of  woman,  as  a  whole,  to  enter  these  new  occupations, 
to  pursue  them  through  life.  They  enter  many  which  they  soon 
abandon  ;  and  that  is  good  —  particularly  the  abandonment.  But, 
natural  and  inevitable  as  this  tendency  was  in  the  beginning, 
the  higher  education  of  women  should  be  recognized  as  the  de- 
velopment in  women  of  the  capacities  and  powers  which  will  fit 
them  to  make  family  life  more  intelligent,  more  enjoyable,  hap- 
pier, more  productive  —  more  productive  in  every  sense,  physi- 
cally, mentally,  and  spiritually.  To  this  modification  of  the  higher 
education  of  women  as  we  have  seen  it  during  the  past  genera- 
tion may  we  not  all  look  forward  with  abundant  hope  ? 

55.    THE  EDUCATION   OF  THE  GIRL  l 

I  do  not  know  why  an  utterance  on  that  subject  in  yesterday 
morning's  paper  stirred  me  up  more  than  similar  ones  which 
I  am  constantly  seeing  in  print.  Perhaps  it  was  because  the  ut- 
terer  was  advertised  as  an  "  authority  "on  "  vocational  education," 
for  his  words  did  not  differ  essentially  from  the  current  platitude. 
"The  problem  of  girls'  education  is  simple,"  he  said  in  effect, 
"  since  what  you  have  to  do  is  merely  to  train  them  to  be  home- 
keepers  ;  to  teach  them  the  details  of  the  management  of  the 
house  and  the  care  of  children,  and  not  to  despise  domestic  duties." 

1  By  Mary  Leal  Harkness.  From  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  March,  1914,  pp.  324- 
330. 


568  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

I  regret  that  I  inadvertently  gave  away  the  paper  this  morning, 
for  I  should  be  glad  to  quote  the  "authority's  "  own  statement  as 
to  the  complexity  of  the  problem  of  the  boy's  education  as  con- 
trasted with  the  perfect  simplicity  of  that  of  the  girl's.  He  does 
recognize  that  it  may  be  difficult  to  determine  just  what  vocation 
may  satisfy  the  physical  and  spiritual  needs  (I  put  the  physical 
first,  of  course,  because  that  is  the  up-to-date  order  of  consider- 
ation) of  a  boy  between  the  ages  of  fourteen  and  twenty-one,  and 
admits  that  a  good  deal  of  anxious  thought  should  be  given  to 
the  question  by  the  truly  conscientious  educator.  But  he  evidently 
considers  that  it  is  a  peculiar  token  of  the  dispensations  and  com- 
pensations of  an  all-wise  Providence  that  time  for  this  is  given 
to  the  thoughtful  pedagogue  through  the  fact  that  he  has  to  spend 
practically  none  in  guessing  at  the  possible  destiny  of  the  girl. 

Considering  that  even  in  the  remote  days  of  Carthaginian 
Dido  I'arium  et  mutabile  femina  seems  to  have  been  a  proverb, 
and  that  ever  since,  in  various  tongues  and  under  various  skies, 
woman  has  been  described  always  as  "uncertain,  coy  and  hard  to 
please,"  there  is  a  note  of  originality  in  this  serene  assumption 
that  in  one  respect,  and  that  the  supreme  one,  she  is  invariable, 
and  perfectly  easy  to  please,  and  I  almost  feel  constrained  to 
apologize  for  calling  it  a  "  platitude."  On  the  whole,  however,  I 
think  I  shall  let  my  descriptive  term  stand,  for  the  definition  of 
a  platitude  does  not  demand  that  it  should  also  be  inconsistent 
with  some  other  platitude. 

But  why,  I  beg  to  ask,  does  everyone  know  that  the  vocation 
which  is  sure  to  delight  every  girl  and  in  which  she  is  sure  to 
succeed  (always  provided,  of  course,  that  she  is  given  the  proper 
"  practical  "  training  in  her  school  days)  is  housekeeping  and  the 
rearing  of  children,  when  even  the  cocksure  vocationalist  has 
to  admit  that  he  cannot  always  foretell  with  absolute  certainty 
whether  a  boy  of  fourteen  was  made  to  be  a  carpenter  or  an 
engineer,  a  farmer  or  a  Methodist  preacher  ?  In  our  outward 
configuration  of  form  and  feature  we  women  confessedly  differ 
as  greatly  from  one  another  as  do  men.  Why  this  assumption 
that  in  the  inward  configuration  of  character,  taste,  and  talent  we 
are  all  made  upon  one  pattern  ?  I  must  say  that  the  perpetual 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN  569 

declaration  on  the  "  woman's  page  "  of  modern  periodicals  that 
"  every  woman  should  know  how  to  cook  a  meal,  and  make  her 
own  clothes,  and  feed  a  baby  "  fills  me  with  scorn  unutterable. 
But  then  for  that  matter  the  mere  fact  of  a  "  woman's  page  " 
fills  me  with  scorn.  Why  not  a  "  man's  page,"  with  a  miscel- 
lany of  twaddle,  labeled  as  exclusively  adapted  to  the  masculine 
intellect  ?  The  idea  that  literature  is  properly  created  male  and 
female  is  no  less  absurd  than  the  idea  that  there  is  one  educa- 
tion of  the  man  and  another  of  the  woman.  And  it  is  no 
more  essential  to  the  progress  of  the  universe  that  every  woman 
should  be  taught  to  cook  than  that  every  man  should  be  taught 
to  milk  a  cow. 

I  do  not  propose  to  enter  into  any  discussion  of  the  possible 
mental  superiority  of  either  sex  over  the  other  (although  I  cannot 
resist  quoting  in  an  "  aside "  the  recent  remark  to  me  of  a 
teacher  of  distinguished  judgment  and  long  experience:  "The 
fact  is,  girls  are  much  better  students  than  boys  "),  but  only  to 
maintain  this :  that  girls  show  as  much  diversity  of  taste  in 
intellectual  work  as  boys,  that  their  aptitude  for  work  purely 
intellectual  is  as  great,  and  that,  therefore,  whatever  variation  is 
made  in  the  present  plan  of  their  education,  it  should  not  be 
based  upon  the  narrow  foundation  of  preconceived  ideas  of 
differences  inherent  in  sex.  I  do  not  believe  that  anything 
necessarily  "becomes  a  woman  "  more  than  a  man,  except  as  our 
superstition  has  made  it  seem  to  do  so. 

Yet,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  superstition  begins  to  hamper  a  girl's 
education  almost  at  the  very  beginning,  and  one  of  the  first 
forms  which  it  takes  is  "  consideration  of  her  health."  Consider- 
ation for  the  health  of  a  child  of  either  sex  is  more  than  laud- 
able, if  it  be  intelligently  exercised  ;  but  I  really  cannot  see  why 
our  daughters  deserve  more  of  such  consideration  than  our  sons. 
And  the  typical  consideration  for  the  health  of  the  little  girl  and 
the  young  maiden  is  not  infused  with  a  striking  degree  of  intel- 
ligence, as  is  evidenced  by  the  very  small  amount  of  intelligence 
with  which  we  invariably  credit  the  girl  herself.  For  absolutely 
the  only  kind  of  activity  which  we  ever  conceive  to  be  injurious 
to  her  is  mental  activity. 


570  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

One  might  perhaps  agree  to  the  reiterated  parental  excuse  for 
half -educated  daughters  that  "  nothing  can  compensate  a  girl  for 
the  loss  of  her  health,"  if  parents  would  explain  how  they  think 
that  anything  can  compensate  a  boy  for  the  loss  of  his.  But 
they  take  that  risk  quite  blithely,  and  send  him  to  college.  Per- 
sonally I  have  never  seen  any  evidence  that  the  risk  for  either 
sex  is  more  than  a  phantom,  and  I  believe  that  it  is  yet  to  be 
proved  that  the  study  of  books  has.  ever  in  itself  been  responsible 
for  the  breaking  down  in  health  of  any  human  being.  Many 
foolish  things  done  in  connection  with  the  study  of  books  have 
contributed  to  the  occasional  failure  in  health  of  students,  but 
there  is,  I  firmly  believe,  no  reason  but  prejudiced  superstition 
for  the  unanimity  with  which  the  fond  mamma  and  the  family 
physician  fix  the  cause  of  the  breakdown  in  the  books,  and 
never  in  the  numerous  and  usually  obvious  other  activities.  And 
in  the  spasms  of  commiseration  for  the  unfortunates  whose 
"  health  has  been  ruined  by  hard  study  "  nobody  has  taken  the 
trouble  to  notice  the  by-no-means  infrequent  cases  of  young 
persons,  and  girls  especially,  of  really  delicate  health,  who  have 
stuck  to  their  studies,  but  with  a  reasonable  determination  not  to 
try  to  stick  to  ten  or  a  dozen  other  side  issues  at  the  same  time, 
and  have  come  out  of  college,  not  physical  wrecks,  but  stronger 
than  when  they  went  in.  And  who  shall  say  with  what  greater 
capacity  for  enjoying  life  than  those  who  have  devoted  the  prin- 
cipal energy  of  their  adolescence  to  the  conservation  of  their 
health  —  frequently  with  no  marked  success  ? 

So  far  as  the  normal  child  is  concerned,  his  —  and  her  — 
brain  is  naturally  as  active  as  his  body,  and  it  is  not  "  crowding," 
nor  yet  "  overstimulation,"  to  give  that  active  and  acquisitive 
brain  material  worth  while  to  work  with.  Therefore,  the  pathetic 
picture  which  has  been  painted  recently  in  certain  periodicals 
of  the  lean  and  nervous  little  overworked  schoolgirl  may  be 
classed,  I  think,  among  the  works  of  creative  art  rather  than 
among  photographs  taken  from  life.  Such  pictures,  as  art,  may 
rank  very  high,  but  do  not  deserve  great  commendation  as 
a  contribution  to  the  science  of  education.  I  am  not  saying 
that  there  -are  not  many  abominations  practiced  in  our  schools, 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN  571 

especially  of  primary  and  secondary  grade ;  but  they  are  not  in 
the  direction  of  overeducation. 

The  thing  against  which  I  pray  to  see  a  mighty  popular  pro- 
test is  the  wasting  of  children's  time,  and  the  dissipation  of  all 
their  innate  powers  of  concentration,  through  the  great  number 
of  studies  of  minor  (not  to  use  a  less  complimentary  adjective) 
educational  value,  which  is  now  one  of  the  serious  evils  in  our 
schools.  And  I  think  that  this  evil  is  bearing  rather  more  heavily 
upon  the  girls  than  upon  the  boys,  for  more  than  one  reason. 

First,  if  there  is  actually  a  difference,  innate  or  developed  by 
years  of  artificial  sex-distinction,  in  the  attitude  of  boys  and  girls 
toward  their  studies,  it  is  that  girls  generally  do  seem  inclined 
to  take  their  school  work  somewhat  more  seriously  than  boys, 
whether  this  be  due  to  greater  interest  in  the  work  itself,  or 
greater  sensitiveness  to  failure.  Consequently  the  mere  effort  to 
give  conscientious  attention  to  so  many  different  subjects  may 
produce  a  nervous  condition  ;  but  not  because  a  girl  is  learning 
too  much,  or  even,  in  a  certain  sense,  working  too  hard. 

Secondly,  because  this  multiplication  of  the  trivialities  of  edu- 
cation in  the  lower  grades  means  the  neglect  or  postponement 
of  subjects  which  even  the  "progressives"  still  allow  to  approx- 
imate, at  least,  the  fundamentals,  there  is  a  congestion  of  all 
these  more  important  subjects,  besides  a  fresh  array  of  time- 
devouring  frills,  in  the  high-school  years,  —  the  one  period  in 
a  girl's  life  when,  if  ever,  she  does  run  some  risk  of  physical 
breakdown  from  overstrain.  As  a  result,  if  she  be  conscientious 
and  ambitious,  she  does  sometimes  give  way  under  the  dread  of 
failing  to  carry  the  suddenly  increased  load  for  which  she  has  not 
been  properly  trained.  But  this,  remember,  is  not  the  result  of 
hard  study ;  it  is  the  natural  consequence  of  never  having  been 
taught  how  to  study  hard. 

But  thirdly,  the  multiplicity  of  facts  now  being  pursued  in  the 
schools  is  particularly  deadly  to  the  girl  because  it  gives  a  fresh 
impulse  to  the  thing  which  has  long  been  the  peculiar  foe  of 
woman's  development :  the  tendency  to  dissipate  her  abilities  in 
the  pursuit  of  an  infinity  of  trivial  activities.  Trained  in  school 
to  think  that  there  are  "  so  many  things  that  it  is  nice  for  a  girl 


572  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

to  know  how  to  do,"  she  goes  on  into  womanhood,  and  through 
it,  still  thinking  that  there  are  so  many  things  that  it  is  nice  for 
a  woman  to  do,  and  she  ambles  along,  doing  them,  so  far  as  time 
and  strength  permit,  until  she  comes  up  to  that  final  function, 
which,  it  is  truly  refreshing  to  think,  demands  even  of  a  woman 
her  undivided  attention.  How  pleasant  to  remember  that  not 
even  the  most  domestic  will  ever  have  to  turn  back  from  the  gate 
of  death  to  embroider  a  centerpiece  or  heat  the  milk  for  the  baby. 

Would  men  ever  get  anywhere,  do  you  think,  if  they  fussed 
around  with  as  many  disconnected  things  as  most  women  do  ? 
And  the  worst  of  our  case  is  that  we  are  rather  inclined  to  point 
with  pride  to  what  is  really  one  of  the  most  vicious  habits  of  our 
sex.  We  have  all  seen  the  swelling  satisfaction  with  which  the 
comely  young  schoolma'am,  complimented  upon  a  pretty  gown, 
announces,  "  I  made  it  myself."  And  we  have  all  heard  the  chorus 
of  admiring  approbation  following  the  announcement  —  joined  in 
it,  perhaps,  and  asked  to  borrow  the  pattern.  But  really,  viewed 
in  the  light  of  reason,  what  is  there  about  the  feat  upon  which 
she  should  so  plume  herself  ?  Suppose  that  a  man  should  point 
proudly  to  his  nether  garments,  and  say,  "  Lo  !  I  made  these 
trousers."  I  have  not  a  mental  picture  of  even  the  most  econom- 
ical of  his  fellow  clerks,  or  mail  carriers,  or  clergymen,  or  school- 
teachers, crowding  around  to  admire  and  cry,  "  What  a  splendid 
way  to  spend  your  time  out  of  business  hours  !  And  it  looks  just 
like  a  tailor-made."  (Which  last  is  just  as  truly  a  lie  when  we 
tell  it  to  our  fellow  women  as  it  would  be  if  men  told  it  to  men.) 

The  truth  is,  most  school-teachers  who  make  their  own  clothes 
ought  to  be  ashamed  of  it,  for  they  are  stealing  time  which  be- 
longs to  their  profession  and  their  patrons.  And  if  they  defend 
themselves,  as  many  of  them  have  pitifully  good  reason  to,  with 
the  plea  of  salaries  so  near  the  starvation  point  that  they  might 
go  unclad  unless  they  fashioned  their  own  covering,  I  would  reply 
that  perhaps  the  general  average  of  the  salaries  of  women  teachers 
might  be  appreciably  raised,  if  any  considerable  number  of  them 
spent  their  time  out  of  school  hours  in  efforts  to  make  themselves 
worthy  of  even  the  salary  they  now  receive.  ...  I  should  consider 
it  very  close  to  a  sin  for  me  habitually  to  do  my  own  laundry 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN  573 

work,  not  because  I  should  be  taking  the  work  from  a  poorer 
woman  who  needs  it,  —  I  wonder  why  a  certain  type  of  social 
theorist  accuses  women  like  me  of  doing  that  by  entrance  into 
professional  life,  and  then  is  so  calm  when  we  "save  money  "  by 
keeping  her  regular  work  from  the  dressmaker  or  laundress,  — 
but  because  I  should  be  taking  my  time  and  my  energy  from  the 
pupils  to  whom  I  am  pledged  to  fit  myself  to  teach  Latin  as  well 
as  I  possibly  can. 

But  my  objection  to  the  whole  movement  to  "  redirect "  the 
education  of  girls  is  not  that  many  very  good  things  are  not  put 
into  the  redirected  curriculum,  but  that  its  whole  direction  is 
wrong.  I  cannot  say  that  it  is  not  a  good  thing  for  some  women 
to  know  how  to  cook  and  sew  well,  for  it  is  indeed  both  good 
and  necessary  to  civilized  life.  I  cannot  say  that  some  of  the 
subjects  introduced  into  a  good  domestic-science  course  are  not 
educative  and  truly  scientific,  because  I  should  be  saying  what  is 
not  true.  But  I  do  believe  that  the  idea  at  the  basis  of  it  all  is 
fundamentally  false.  For  the  idea  is  this  :  that  one  half  of  the 
human  race  should  be  "  educated  "  for  one  single  occupation,  while 
the  multitudinous  other  occupations  of  civilized  life  should  all  be 
loaded  upon  the  other  half.  The  absurd  inequality  of  the  division 
should  alone  be  enough  to  condemn  it.  The  wonder  is  that  the 
men  do  not  complain  of  being  overloaded  with  so  disproportionate 
a  share  of  the  burden.  I  dare  say  it  is  their  chivalry  which  makes 
them  bear  it  so  bravely. 

This  statement  of  the  division  is  not  inconsistent  with  my  com- 
plaint that  women  try  to  do  too  many  things.  They  do,  but  they 
are  all  things  which  are  supposed  to  be  included  in  some  way  or 
other  within  their  "  proper  sphere,"  the  maintenance  of  the  home. 
Sometimes  I  grow  so  weary  of  The  Home  that  if  I  did  not  love 
my  own  I  could  really  wish  that  there  were  no  such  thing  upon 
this  terrestrial  ball.  I  do  love  my  own  home,  but  I  protest  that 
the  primary  reason  is  not  because  my  mother  is  a  good  cook,  al- 
though she  is,  notably.  Even  as  I  write  these  words  I  thrill  with 
the  thought  of  my  near  return  to  her  strawberry  shortcakes.  But 
I  know  other  homes  where  there  is  also  strawberry  shortcake  of 
a  high  order,  in  which  I  yet  think  that  even  filial  devotion  would 


574  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

have  a  hard  task  to  make  me  feel  much  contentment:  I  might  say 
the  same  of  the  various  things  that  make  my  home  attractive  to 
look  upon.  Yet  the  course  of  study  which  would  graduate  "  home- 
makers  "  is  based  upon  the  principle  that  "home"  consists  pri- 
marily of  these  things.  I  am  aware  that  its  makers  would  include 
certain  studies  supposed  to  contribute  to  "  culture,"  but  even  where 
these  are  well  taught,  they  are  still,  in  my  opinion,  rendered 
largely  ineffectual  by  the  false  motive  for  study  inculcated  from 
the  beginning,  which  makes  them  all,  for  women,  only  side  issues. 

I  cannot  see  that  girls  were  created  essentially  to  be  "  home- 
keepers  "  any  more  than  boys.  Men  and  women,  so  far  as  they 
choose  to  marry,  are  to  make  a  home  together,  and  any  system 
of  education  which  so  plans  the  division  of  labor  between  them 
that  the  woman  shall  "  make  "and  stay  in  a  place  for  which  the 
man  pays  and  to  which  he  returns  once  in  twenty-four  hours,  is 
wrong  for  at  least  two  good  reasons.  It  trains  to  two  such  differ- 
ent conceptions  of  responsibility  that  true  companionship  and 
community  of  interest  is  diminished,  and  often  almost  destroyed ; 
and  it  so  magnifies  a  specialized  manual  training  for  the  woman 
that  it  places  her  at  the  end  in  the  artisan  class,  and  not  in  the 
educated.  If  a  woman  so  trained  knows  how  to  care  for  the  minds 
of  her  children  as  well  as  she  knows  how  to  feed  and  dress  and 
physic  and  spank  them,  she  owes  it  to  the  grace  of  Heaven  and 
not  to  her  "  vocational  "  education  "  for  motherhood."  But  I  do  not 
believe  that  girls  should  be  "  educated  to  be  mothers  "  at  all,  in  the 
absurdly  narrow  sense  in  which  such  education  is  now  conceived. 

Every  form  of  special  instruction  as  a  preparation  for  parent- 
hood that  can  be  necessary  for  a  girl  is  necessary  for  a  boy  also. 
For  what  does  it  profit  a  woman  or  her  offspring  to  have  kept 
herself  strong  and  clean,  to  have  learned  the  laws  of  sex-hygiene 
and  reproduction,  or  of  care  of  the  child,  if  the  father  of  that 
child  has  failed  to  do  the  same  ? 

But  I  cannot  see  how  the  world  can  have  gone  so  mad  as  it 
has  over  the  idea  that  tJic  birth  of  tJic  cJiihl,  and  its  few  subse- 
quent months  of  existence,  constitute  the  epochal  point,  the  climax, 
as  it  were,  in  the  life  of  any  married  pair.  Surely,  it  is  a  very 
narrow  view  of  life  which  fails  to  see  how  much  is  to  be  done  in 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN  575 

the  world  besides  rearing  children.  It  is  true  that  society  does 
perhaps  in  a  way  recognize  this,  but  it  seems  to  wish  all  active 
doing  relegated  to  the  men,  while  the  woman's  contribution  is 
confined  to  "  influence  "  exerted  while  nursing  a  numerous  prog- 
eny through  the  diseases  of  infancy  in  a  happy  and  perfectly  san- 
itary home.  It  is  time  for  a  more  general  recognition  that  such 
"  feminine  influence,"  like  honesty,  laudatur  et  alget.  The  aver- 
age woman  only  influences  her  husband  or  children  to  anything 
good  through  her  brains  and  character,  and  the  degree  of  power 
to  express  either  brains  or  character  depends  mainly  upon  educa- 
tion. It  sounds  well  to  proclaim  the  mothering  of  the  world  as 
woman's  greatest  profession,  her  truest  glory  ;  but  it  would  be  well 
also  to  consider  that  such  "mothering"  as  is  mostly  done  —  and 
will  be,  so  long  as  women  are  taught  to  prepare  only  for  its 
physical  demands,  its  purely  material  services  —  is  never  going  to 
be  either  great  or  glorious.  An  education  which  can  give  the 
greatest  intellectual  strength,  the  completest  mental  sanity,  and 
so  the  broadest  outlook  upon  life,  is  the  need  and  the  right  of 
girls  and  boys  alike. 

But  surely  it  cannot  be  said  that  their  need  is  met  alike  unless 
the  likeness  in  their  education  extends  also  to  the  ideal  of  the 
use  that  is  to  be  made  of  it  after  school  days  are  past.  If  the 
colleges  in  which  women  are  taught  have  failed  at  all  in  accom- 
plishing their  full  possibility,  it  has  been  in  the  comparatively 
small  degree  to  which  they  have  succeeded  in  removing  even 
from  the  minds  of  the  young  women  themselves  the  hoary  idea 
that,  after  all,  the  principal  thing  to  be  expected  of  the  higher 
education  of  women  is  still  the  diffusion  of  an  exceptionally 
exalted  type  of  the  aforementioned  "  influence."  It  does  seem 
rather  a  small  return  for  years  of  collegiate  effort  that  the  best 
that  can  be  said  of  them  is  that  a  woman's  mental  attainments 
have  proved  a  great  assistance  to  her  husband's  career  as  a 
Cabinet  officer.  I  cannot  think  that  we  shall  have  what  wholly 
deserves  to  be  called  an  educated  womanhood  until  we  have  dis- 
sipated the  idea,  still  so  prevalent  even  among  women  them- 
selves, that  a  woman  needs  to  have  a  definite  occupation  only 
until  she  marries,  or  if  she  fails  to  marry.  That  "  a  woman  must 


576  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

choose  between  marriage  and  a  career  "  is  the  most  detestable  of 
all  the  woman  platitudes  in  the  entire  collection,  because,  while 
most  of  these  platitudes  are  merely  stupid,  this  one  is  wholly 
vicious.  It  has  been  so  incessantly  reiterated,  to  the  accompani- 
ment of  much  shallow  sentimentalizing  on  the  sacredness  of  home 
and  mother,  that  the  public  has  never  been  allowed  a  quiet 
moment  to  reflect  on  its  injustice,  and  to  realize  how  possible, 
and  therefore  imperative,  is  its  removal  along  with  other  ancient 
injustices. 

As  I  have  urged  in  a  previous  article,  the  recently  born  and 
phenomenally  growing  department  of  education  which  styles  itself 
variously  Domestic  Science,  Household  Economy,  and  I  believe 
one  or  two  other  impressive  things,  might  be  the  pioneer  in  this 
great  work  of  justice,  if  it  would.  So  far  as  that  educational 
movement  adds  to  woman's  ability  to  become  a  good  citizen  by 
leading  her  to  an  intelligent  interest  in  the  civic  problems  of 
housing,  feeding,  teaching,  and  amusing  not  alone  her  immediate 
family  group,  but  a  whole  community,  it  does  more  in  the  right 
direction.  But  the  very  women  who  are  themselves  making  a 
successful  profession  of  teaching  this  group  of  subjects  (thanks 
mainly  to  their  having  received  the  sort  of  education  they  now 
deprecate  for  women  in  general)  apparently  claim  for  them  no 
greater  mission  for  the  average  young  woman  than  ability  to 
guard  her  husband  from  ptomaine  poison  in  his  ice  cream,  or  to 
make  gowns  and  shirt  waists  well  enough  so  that  she  can  earn  a 
living,  "  if  she  ever  has  to  work." 

Shall  we  never  cease  to  hear  that  contemptible  reason  for  a 
girl's  education  ?  An  age  in  which  women  have  proved  them- 
selves possessors  of  intellects  might  naturally  be  expected  to  rec- 
ognize as  a  province  of  their  education  the  ability  to  discover 
some  particular  intellectual  bent  whose  training  and  development 
for  lifelong  use  are  not  contingent  upon  matrimony  and  the 
financial  condition  of  two  men  —  their  fathers  and  their  husbands 
respectively.  It  is  held  rather  reprehensible  to  say  it,  but  I  do 
not  see  why  every  girl  has  not  as  good  a  right  as  every  boy  to 
dream  of  fame,  and  to  be  put  in  the  way  of  reaching  fame.  If 
ninety-nine  per  cent  of  the  girls  fail  of  even  the  smallest  title  to 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN  577 

fame,  just  as  ninety-nine  per  cent  of  the  boys  do,  yet  the  level 
of  their  lives  must  inevitably  be  raised  by  the  education  and  the 
educational  ideals  which  we  should  provide  for  them  all  for  the 
sake  of  the  hundredth  girl.  The  supreme  ideal  which  I  hope  that 
our  schools  may  some  day  inspire  is  that  every  girl  should  dis- 
cover something,  whether  of  fame-bringing  probabilities  or  not, 
which  will  seem  to  her  worthy  of  being  a  life  work. 

In  nearly  every  present  plan  for  the  education  of  girls  there 
lurks  the  same  fatal  weakness ;  girls  are  not  made  to  realize  as 
boys  are  that  they  are  being  educated  for  a  business  which  must 
last  as  long  as  life  lasts  ;  that  they  are  to  feel  an  interest  in  it 
and  grow  in  it,  —  to  develop  it,  if  possible ;  they  are  not  taught 
that  a  definite  purposeful  share  in  the  outside  world's  work  is  a 
privilege,  not  a  misfortune.  My  own  theory  is  that  the  only  way 
in  which  such  a  state  of  feminine  mind  can  be  made  general  is 
by  broadening  woman's  education  on -the  purely  intellectual  side; 
but  of  course  I  am  open  to  conviction  that  the  result  can  be 
better  attained  by  "  scientific  "  breadmaking,  — even  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  Latin  and  Greek. 

REFERENCES  1 
WOMAN'S  POSITION,  HISTORICALLY 

For  woman's  position  among  primitive  peoples  the  books  dealing  with  the 
evolution  of  morals  are  the  best  source  of  information.  See  especially : 

*HOBHOUSE,  L.  T.,  Morals  in  Evolution  (2  vols.),  1906.  See  Vol.  I,  chaps. 

iv  and  v. 

*THOMAS,  W.  L,  Sex  and  Society  (1907),  chaps,  ii,  iv,  v. 
WESTERMARCK,    E.,    The    Origin    and    Development    of    Moral    Ideas 

(2  vols.),  1906.    See  chaps,  xxvi,  1,  li. 

For  woman's  position  among  early  western  peoples  and  the  influence  of 
early  Christianity  upon  her  position  see : 

DOXALDSON,  J.,  Woman :  her  Position  and  Influence  in  Ancient  Greece 

and  Rome  and  among  the  early  Christians,  1907. 
ELLIS,  H.,  Sex  in  Relation  to  Society  (1912),  chap,  v,  ix,  x. 
*HECKER,  E.,  A  Short  History  of  Women's  Rights,  1910. 
*LECKY,  W.  E.  H.,  History  of  European  Morals,  Vol.  II,  chap.  v. 

1  Starred  references  are  those  worthy  of  first  attention  in  additional  reading. 


57$  READINGS  IN   SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

For  woman's  position  under  the  law  see : 

LEGOUVE",  E.,  The  Moral  History  of  Woman,  1860. 

LOEB,  I.,  The  Legal  Property  Relations  of  Married  Parties,  Columbia 

University  Studies  in  History,  Economics,  and  Public  Law  (1900), 

Vol.  XIII. 

MILLER,  F.  J.,  Woman's  Position  in  the  Laws  of  the  Nations,  1913. 
POLLOCK  and  MAITLAND,  History  of  the  English  Law  before  the  Time 

of  Edward  I  (2  vols.),  1899. 

*SHOULEK,  Law  of  Family  Relations,  abridged  edition,  1905. 
Woman  Citizen's  Library  (Chicago,  1913),  Vol.  VIII. 

THE  ENTRANCE  OF  WOMEN  INTO  INDUSTRY 

*ABHOTT,  E.,  Women  in  Industry,  a  Study  in  American  Economic  His- 
tory, 1910. 

BUTLER,  E.  B.,  Women  and  the  Trades,  1909. 

KELLEY,  F.,  Modern  Industry  in  Relation  to  the  Family,  Health,  Educa- 
tion, Morality,  1914. 

Report  on  women  and  child  wage-earners  in  the  United  States,  issued 
under  the  direction  of  the  United  States  Commissioner  of  Labor 
(19  vols.),  1911-1913.  See  especially  Vol.  IX. 

*United  States  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  Bulletin  No.  175  (December, 
1915),  Summary  of  the  report  on  condition  of  women  and  child  wage- 
earners  in  the  United  States. 

THE  WOMAN  MOVEMENT 

On  the  earlier  phases  of  feminism  see : 

*HARPER,  I.  H.,  Life  and  Work  of  Susan  B.  Anthony  (3  vols.).  (This  is 
especially  valuable  to  anyone  who  wishes  to  study  the  popular  attitude 
toward  women  fifty  years  ago.) 

*MILL,  J.  S.,  Subjection  of  Women,  1869.  (There  are  several  recent 
cheap  editions.) 

STANTON,  E.  C.,  ANTHONY,  S.  B.,  GAGE,  M.  J.,  and  HARPER,  I.  H., 
History  of  Woman  Suffrage  (4  vols.),  1881-1902.  (A  mine  of  informa- 
tion on  the  early  woman  movement  in  the  United  States,  but  very 
poorly  organized.) 

*WOLLSTONECRAKT,  MARY,  Vindication  of  the  Rights  of  Women,  ist 
edition,  London,  i  798.  (A  new  edition  with  Introduction  by  Millicent 
G.  Fawcett  was  published  in  1 890.) 

On  the  present  woman  movement  see  : 

BEARD,  MARY  RITTEK,  Woman's  Work  in  Municipalities,  1915. 
CAIRO,  M.,  The  Morality  of  Marriage  (1897),  pp.  131-191. 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN  579 

*COOLIDGE,  M.  R.,  Why  Women  Are  So,  1912. 

ELLIS,  H.,  The  Task  of  Social  Hygiene,  chaps,  iii  and  iv. 

GILMAN,  C.  P.,  Concerning  Children,  1901. 

*GOODSELL,  W.,  A  History  of  the  Family  as  a  Social  and  Educational 

Institution  (1915),  chaps,  xii,  xiii,  xiv. 
HAMILTON,  C.,  Marriage  as  a  Trade,  1909. 
HECKER,  E.,  A  Short  History  of  Women's  Rights,  1910. 
KEY,  E.,  The  Woman  Movement,  1912. 
*PARSONS,  E.  C.,  The  Old  Fashioned  Woman,  1914. 
PEARSON,  C.,  The  Chances  of  Death  (1897),  Vol.  I,  chap,  vii,  "Woman 

and  Labor." 

Ross,  E.  A.,  The  Changing  Chinese  (1911),  chap.  vii. 
SCHREINER,  O.,  Woman  and  Labor,  1911. 
*SPENCER,  A.  G.,  Woman's  Share  in  Social  Culture,  1913. 
*STETSON,  C.  P.,  Women  and  Economics,  1898. 
*THOMAS,  W.  I.,  Sex  and  Society,  chaps,  vii-ix. 

On  the  suffrage  question  most  of  the  literature  is  of  an  ephemeral  nature, 
but  the  following  will  be  found  useful.    In  favor  of  equal  suffrage  see: 

ADDAMS,  JANE,  Newer  Ideals  of  Peace  (1907),  chap.  vii. 

CROTHERS,  S.  M.,  Meditations  on  Votes  for  Women,  1914. 

DORR,  R.  C.,  What  Eight  Million  Women  Want  (1910),  chap.  x. 

MATHEW,  A.  H.,  Woman  Suffrage,  London,  1907. 

ROBINS,  ELIZABETH,  Way  Stations,  1913.   (A  sympathetic,  and  the  best, 

brief  account  of  the  militant  suffrage  movement  in  England.) 
The  Woman  Citizen's  Library  (Chicago,  1913),  Vol.  VII. 

Against  equal  suffrage  see : 

HARRISON,  F.,  Realities  and  Ideals  (1908),  chap.  v. 

WRIGHT,  A.  E.,  The  Unexpurgated  Case  against  Woman  Suffrage,  1913. 

More  or  less  neutral  are  : 

ALLEN,  W.  H.,  Woman's  Part  in  Government,  191 1. 
SUMNER,  H.  L.,  Woman  Suffrage  in  Colorado,  1909. 


BOOK   IV 
MARRIAGE  AND   DIVORCE 

CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  MARRIAGE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE 

New  Testament  teachings,  581.  —  The  Catholic  doctrine  of  marriage,  586.  —  Prot- 
estant doctrine  of  marriage  and  divorce,  593.  —  The  viewpoint  of  modern  religious 
idealism,  599. —  Marriage  and  individuality,  602.  —  Marriage  and  contract,  609. 

[Despite  the  amount  of  attention  directed  to  the  increasing 
frequency  of  divorce,  it  is  a  curious  fact  that  even  among  edu- 
cated people  very  little  thought  has  until  recently  been  given  to 
the  nature  of  marriage.  Proposals  for  divorce  reform,  or  advo- 
cacy of  reforms  already  proposed,  usually  proceed  upon  purely 
traditional  and  largely  uncritical  conceptions  of  the  nature  and 
ethics  of  the  matrimonial  state.  This  is  due  partly  to  the  fact 
that  the  growth  of  a  scientific  and  critical  spirit  in  social  ethics 
is  a  comparatively  late  development,  and  partly  to  the  fact  that 
the  family  has  under  static  and  nonevolutionary  habits  of  thought 
been  considered  as  beyond  the  province  of  critical  examination. 
The  "  sanctity  of  the  family  "  is  a  phrase  oft  repeated  but  seldom 
defined,  and  the  real  ethical  content  of  it  is  obscure  because  taken 
for  granted.  The  development  of  the  scientific  habit  of  thought 
in  ethics,  of  democratic  sentiments,  and  of  individualism,  have, 
however,  produced  a  new  spirit  of  constructive  criticism  of  mar- 
riage and  family  relations  along  with  other  social  institutions,  and 
we  have  accordingly  the  stimulus  of  sharply  contrasted  views. 
To  understand  the  issues  involved  it  is  necessary  to  have  clearly 
in  mind  the  biblical  basis  for  the  ecclesiastical,  authoritative  view 
of  marriage  as  well  as  some  idea  of  the  evolution  which  Christian 
marriage  ideals  have  undergone.  The  Catholic  doctrine  in  its 

580 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE        581 

essentials  is  based  upon  the  dictates  of  the  Council  of  Trent,  and 
is  thus  far  little  influenced  by  Modernism  within  the  Church. 
While  Protestant  doctrine  in  practice,  permitting  divorce  as  it 
does  for  the  one  (disputed)  scriptural  ground  of  adultery  (some- 
times somewhat  broadly  interpreted),  is  more  liberal  than  the 
Catholic  theory,  the  most  idealistic  views  of  ethicists  both  inside 
and  outside  the  Church  are  practically  the  same  —  uniting  in  the 
thought  that  no  really  Christian  marriage,  no  marriage  between 
parties  actuated  by  an  ideal  social  ethics,  can  be  terminated  by 
divorce.  In  contrast  to  these  views,  which  perhaps  may  be  said 
to  have  in  mind  human  relations  as  they  ought  to  be  rather  than 
as  they  are  likely  to  be,  more  recent  and  more  rationalistically 
outspoken  views  of  some  sociological  writers  deal  with  marriage 
and  divorce  in  their  practical  social  aspect  —  as  matters,  like 
other  social  relations  and  institutions,  to  be  regarded  in  the  light 
of  social,  economic,  and  practical  ethical  conditions.  The  ethics 
of  divorce,  in  this  rationalistic  view,  is  not  to  be  determined  by 
religious  tradition  or  by  appeal  to  authority  of  any  kind,  but 
to  a  rational  and  unbiased  examination  of  actual  facts  in  their 
bearing  upon  justice  to  the  individual  and  upon  rational  progress 
in  general  social  well-being.  It  is  possible  that  the  idealists  are 
willing  to  sacrifice  the  individual  to  an  assumed  abstract  social 
good  ;  it  is  also  possible,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the  rationalists 
are  overly  optimistic  in  the  belief  that  social  welfare  cannot  be 
thought  of  apart  from  the  welfare  of  individuals  and  that  a  real 
social  morality  will  follow  only  upon  the  right  of"  the  individual 
to  free  himself,  or  herself,  from  an  unfortunate  bond  which 
seems,  at  least,  to  negate  the  purpose  and  happiness  of  life.  This, 
however,  is  a  question  for  the  student  to  decide.] 

56.    THE  TEACHINGS   OF  JESUS  AND   OF  PAUL 

MARK  x,  2-12.  And  the  Pharisees  came  to  him,  and  asked 
him,  Is  it  lawful  for  a  man  to  put  away  his  wife  ?  tempting  him. 
And  he  answered  and  said  unto  them,  What  did  Moses  com- 
mand you  ?  And  they  said,  Moses  suffered  to  write  a  bill  of 
divorcement,  and  to  put  her  away.  And  Jesus  answered  and  said 


582  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

unto  them,  For  the  hardness  of  your  heart  he  wrote  you  this 
precept.  But  from  the  beginning  of  the  creation  God  made  them 
male  and  female.  For  this  cause  shall  a  man  leave  his  father 
and  mother,  and  cleave  to  his  wife  ;  and  they  twain  shall  be 
one  flesh  :  so  then  they  are  no  more  twain,  but  one  flesh.  What 
therefore  God  hath  joined  together,  let  no  man  put  asunder.  And 
in  the  house  his  disciples  asked  him  again  of  the  same  matter. 
And  he  saith  unto  them,  Whosoever  shall  put  away  his  wife, 
and  marry  another,  committeth  adultery  against  her.  And  if  a 
woman  shall  put  away  her  husband,  and  be  married  to  another, 
she  committeth  adultery. 

LUKE  xvi,  18.  Whosoever  putteth  away  his  wife,  and  mar- 
rieth  another,  committeth  adultery  :  and  whosoever  marrieth  her 
that  is  put  away  from  her  husband  committeth  adultery. 

MATTHEW  v,  31,  32.  It  hath  been  said,  Whosoever  shall  put 
away  his  wife,  let  him  give  her  a  writing  of  divorcement :  but  I 
say  unto  you,  That  whosoever  shall  put  away  his  wife,  saving  for 
the  cause  of  fornication,  causeth  her  to  commit  adultery :  and 
whosoever  shall  marry  her  that  is  divorced  committeth  adultery. 

MATTHEW  xix,  3-9.  The  Pharisees  also  came  unto  him, 
tempting  him,  and  saying  unto  him,  Is  it  lawful  for  a  man  to 
put  away  his  wife  for  every  cause  ?  And  he  answered  and  said 
unto  them,  Have  ye  not  read,  that  he  which  made  them  at  the 
beginning  made  them  male  and  female.  And  said,  For  this 
cause  shall  a  man  leave  father  and  mother,  and  shall  cleave  to 
his  wife  :  and  they  twain  shall  be  one  flesh  ?  Wherefore  they  are 
no  more  twain,  but  one  flesh.  What  therefore  God  hath  joined 
together,  let  not  man  put  asunder.  They  say  unto  him,  Why  did 
Moses  then  command  to  give  a  writing  of  divorcement,  and  to 
put  her  away  ?  He  saith  unto  them,  Moses  because  of  the  hard- 
ness of  your  hearts  suffered  you  to  put  away  your  wives :  but 
from  the  beginning  it  was  not  so.  And  I  say  unto  you,  Whoso- 
ever shall  put  away  his  wife,  except  it  be  for  fornication,  and 
shall  marry  another,  committeth  adultery :  and  whoso  marrieth 
her  which  is  put  away  doth  commit  adultery. 

i  CORINTHIANS  vii,  1-4,  7-16,  25-40.  Now  concerning  the 
things  whereof  ye  wrote  unto  me  :  It  is  good  for  a  man  not  to 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE        583 

touch  a  woman.  Nevertheless,  to  avoid  fornication,  let  every  man 
have  his  own  wife,  and  let  every  woman  have  her  own  husband. 
Let  the  husband  render  unto  the  wife  due  benevolence :  and 
likewise  also  the  wife  unto  the  husband.  The  wife  hath  not 
power  of  her  own  body,  but  the  husband  :  and  likewise  also  the 
husband  hath  not  power  of  his  own  body,  but  the  wife. 

For  I  would  that  all  men  were  even  as  I  myself.  But  every 
man  hath  his  proper  gift  of  God,  one  after  this  manner,  and  an- 
other after  that.  I  say  therefore  to  the  unmarried  and  widows,  It 
is  good  for  them  that  they  abide  even  as  I.  But  if  they  cannot 
contain,  let  them  marry  :  for  it  is  better  to  marry  than  to  burn. 
And  unto  the  married  I  command,  yet  not  I,  but  the  Lord,  let 
not  the  wife  depart  from  her  husband  :  but  and  if  she  depart, 
let  her  remain  unmarried,  or  be  reconciled  to  her  husband  :  and 
let  not  the  husband  put  away  his  wife.  But  to  the  rest  speak  I, 
not  the  Lord  :  If  any  brother  hath  a  wife  that  believeth  not,  and 
she  be  pleased  to  dwell  with  him,  let  him  not  put  her  away.  And 
the  woman  which  hath  an  husband  that  believeth  not,  and  if  he 
be  pleased  to  dwell  with  her,  let  her  not  leave  him.  For  the 
unbelieving  husband  is  sanctified  by  the  wife,  and  the  unbelieving 
wife  is  sanctified  by  the  husband  :  else  were  your  children  un- 
clean ;  but  now  are  they  holy.  But  if  the  unbelieving  depart,  let 
him  depart.  A  brother  or  a  sister  is  not  under  bondage  in  such 
cases  :  but  God  hath  called  us  to  peace.  For  what  knowest  thou, 
O  wife,  whether  thou  shalt  save  thy  husband  ?  or  how  knowest 
thou,  O  man,  whether  thou  shalt  save  thy  wife  ? 

Now  concerning  virgins  I  have  no  commandment  of  the  Lord : 
yet  I  give  my  judgment,  as  one  that  hath  obtained  mercy  of  the 
Lord  to  be  faithful.  I  suppose  therefore  that  this  is  good  for  the 
present  distress,  I  say,  that  it  is  good  for  a  man  so  to  be.  Art 
thou  bound  unto  a  wife  ?  seek  not  to  be  loosed.  Art  thou  loosed 
from  a  wife  ?  seek  not  a  wife.  But  and  if  thou  marry,  thou  hast 
not  sinned  ;  and  if  a  virgin  marry,  she  hath  not  sinned.  Never- 
theless such  shall  have  trouble  in  the  flesh  :  but  I  spare  you.  But 
this  I  say,  brethren,  the  time  is  short :  it  remaineth,  that  both 
they  that  have  wives  be  as  though  they  had  none  ;  and  they  that 
weep,  as  though  they  wept  not ;  and  they  that  rejoice,  as  though 


584  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

they  rejoiced  not ;  and  they  that  buy,  as  though  they  possessed 
not ;  and  they  that  use  this  world,  as  not  abusing  it :  for  the 
fashion  of  this  world  passeth  away.  But  I  would  have  you  with- 
out carefulness.  He  that  is  unmarried  careth  for  the  things  that 
belong  to  the  Lord,  how  he  may  please  the  Lord :  but  he  that 
is  married  careth  for  the  things  that  are  of  the  world,  how  he 
may  please  his  wife.  There  is  difference  also  between  a  wife 
and  a  virgin.  The  unmarried  woman  careth  for  the  things  of  the 
Lord,  that  she  may  be  holy  both  in  body  and  in  spirit :  but  she 
that  is  married  careth  for  the  things  of  the  world,  how  she  may 
please  her  husband.  And  this  I  speak  for  your  own  profit  ;  not 
that  I  may  cast  a  snare  upon  you,  but  for  that  which  is  comely, 
and  that  ye  may  attend  upon  the  Lord  without  distraction.  But 
if  any  man  think  that  he  behaveth  himself  uncomely  toward  his 
virgin,  if  she  pass  the  flower  of  her  age,  and  need  so  require,  let 
him  do  what  he  will,  he  sinneth  not :  let  them  marry.  Never- 
theless he  that  standeth  steadfast  in  his  heart,  having  no  neces- 
sity, but  hath  power  over  his  own  will,  and  hath  so  decreed  in 
his  heart  that  he  will  keep  his  virgin,  doeth  well.  So  then  he 
that  giveth  her  in  marriage  doeth  well ;  but  he  that  giveth  her 
not  in  marriage  doeth  better.  The  wife  is  bound  by  the  law  as 
long  as  her  husband  liveth  ;  but  if  her  husband  be  dead,  she  is 
at  liberty  to  be  married  to  whom  she  will ;  only  in  the  Lord. 
But  she  is  happier  if  she  so  abide,  after  my  judgment :  and  I 
think  also  that  I  have  the  Spirit  of  God. 

EPHKSIAXS  v,  22-33.  Wives,  submit  yourselves  unto  your 
own  husbands,  as  unto  the  Lord.  For  the  husband  is  the  head 
of  the  wife,  even  as  Christ  is  the  head  of  the  church  :  and  he  is 
the  Saviour  of  the  body.  Therefore  as  the  church  is  subject  unto 
Christ,  so  let  the  wives  be  to  their  own  husbands  in  every 
thing.  Husbands,  love  your  wives,  even  as  Christ  also  loved  the 
church,  and  gave  himself  for  it ;  that  he  might  sanctify  and 
cleanse  it  with  the  washing  of  water  by  the  word,  that  he  might 
present  it  to  himself  a  glorious  church,  not  having  spot,  or 
wrinkle,  or  any  such  thing  ;  but  that  it  should  be  holy  and  with- 
out blemish.  So  ought  men  to  love  their  wives  as  their  own 
bodies.  He  that  loveth  his  wife  loveth  himself.  For  no  man  ever 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE        585 

yet  hated  his  own  flesh  ;  but  nourisheth  and  cherisheth  it,  even 
as  the  Lord  the  church  :  for  we  are  members  of  his  body,  of  his 
flesh,  and  of  his  bones.  For  this  cause  shall  a  man  leave  his 
father  and  mother,  and  shall  be  joined  unto  his  wife,  and  they 
two  shall  be  one  flesh.  This  is  a  great  mystery :  but  I  speak  con- 
cerning Christ  and  the  church.  Nevertheless  let  every  one  of 
you  in  particular  so  love  his  wife  even  as  himself :  and  the  wife 
see  that  she  reverence  her  husband. 

COLOSSIANS  iii,  1 8,  19.  Wives,  submit  yourselves  unto  your 
own  husbands,  as  it  is  fit  in  the  Lord.  Husbands,  love  your  wives, 
and  be  not  bitter  against  them. 

i  TIMOTHY  iii,  2,  n,  12.  A  bishop  then  must  be  blameless, 
the  husband  of  one  wife,  vigilant,  sober,  of  good  behaviour,  given 
to  hospitality,  apt  to  teach.  Even  so  must  their  wives  be  grave, 
not  slanderers,  sober,  faithful  in  all  things.  Let  the  deacons  be 
the  husbands  of  one  wife,  ruling  their  children  and  their  own 
houses  well. 

TITUS  ii,  i,  3-5.  But  speak  thou  the  things  which  become 
sound  doctrine  :  the  aged  women  likewise,  that  they  be  in  be- 
haviour as  becometh  holiness,  not  false  accusers,  not  given  to 
much  wine,  teachers  of  good  things ;  that  they  may  teach  the 
young  women  to  be  sober,  to  love  their  husbands,  to  love  their 
children,  to  be  discreet,  chaste,  keepers  at  home,  good,  obedient 
to  their  own  husbands,  that  the  word  of  God  be  not  blasphemed. 

i  PETER  iii,  1-7.  Likewise,  ye  wives,  be  in  subjection  to  your 
own  husbands  ;  that,  if  any  obey  not  the  word,  they  also  may 
without  the  word  be  won  by  the  conversation  of  the  wives  ;  while 
they  behold  your  chaste  conversation  coupled  with  fear.  Whose 
adorning  let  it  not  be  that  outward  adorning  of  plaiting  the  hair, 
and  of  wearing  of  gold,  or  of  putting  on  of  apparel;  but  let  it 
be  the  hidden  man  of  the  heart,  in  that  which  is  not  corruptible, 
even  the  ornament  of  a  meek  and  quiet  spirit,  which  is  in  the 
sight  of  God  of  great  price.  For  after  this  manner  in  the  old 
time  the  holy  women  also,  who  trusted  in  God,  adorned  them- 
selves, being  in  subjection  unto  their  own  husbands  :  even  as 
Sara  obeyed  Abraham,  calling  him  lord  :  whose  daughters  ye  are, 
as  long  as  ye  do  well,  and  are  not  afraid  with  any  amazement. 


586  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Likewise,  ye  husbands,  dwell  with  them  according  to  knowledge, 
giving  honor  unto  the  wife,  as  unto  the  weaker  vessel,  and  as 
being  heirs  together  of  the  grace  of  life  ;  that  your  prayers  be 
not  hindered. 

57.    THE  CATHOLIC  DOCTRINE  OF  MARRIAGE  J 

Every  honest  man  sees  the  gulf  into  which  the  frequent  dis- 
ruption of  the  marital  relation  will  eventually  bring  us.  Better 
than  anyone  else  could  say  it  the  learned  and  saintly  Pontiff, 
Leo  XIII,  has  summed  up  the  consequences  of  divorce  in  these 
words  :  2 

Divorce  renders  contracts  changeable ;  weakens  the  mutual  love  of  the 
contracting  parties :  gives  inducements  to  unfaithfulness :  is  injurious  to  the 
rearing  and  education  of  children  ;  breaks  up  the  domestic  relations ;  sows 
dissensions  among  families  ;  lessens  and  degrades  the  dignity  of  woman,  who  is 
thus  exposed  to  be  cast  off,  after  having  been  the  slave  of  man's  passions.  And 
as  nothing  conduces  more  to  the  destruction  of  families  and  the  destruction  of 
national  power  than  corruption  of  morals,  it  is  easily  seen  how  hostile  to  the 
prosperity  of  the  family  and  of  the  State  are  the  divorces  which  spring  from 
the  corrupt  morals  of  the  people,  and  as  experience  teaches,  open  the  door, 
and  lead  the  way  to  greater  public  and  private  degradation. 

All  sincere  Protestants  subscribe  to  these  words  of  the  Holy 
Father.  They  know  and  admit  that  the  Catholic  Church  is  not 
responsible  for  raising  the  sluices  of  divorce,  but  that  its  possibil- 
ity arises  from  the  looseness  of  Protestant  teaching  and  practice. 
They  destroyed  the  sanctity  of  marriage  when  they  denied  its 
sacramental  character. 

But,  although  Protestants  and  infidels  know  in  a  general  way 
that  the  Catholic  Church  does  not  tolerate  divorce,  their  informa- 
tion in  regard  to  the  Catholic  doctrine  on  marriage  is  not  very 
clear  nor  very  full.  Many  of  them  do  not  take  the  trouble  to 
study  her  teaching  on  this  or  any  other  subject,  and  yet  there  is 
among  some  a  desire  for  more  information  regarding:  it. 


1  By    II.    A.    Bran.     Adapted   from   the  American    Catholic 
July.  1883,  Vol.  VIII,  pp.  385-404. 

-  l''.ncyclical    of    February    10,    1880,    found    in   "  Acta   quae    apud    Sanctam 
Scdcm,"   etc.,   Vol.   XII. 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE        587 

Marriage,  under  the  law  of  nature,  was  a  mere  contract,  seldom, 
however,  divested  of  a  religious  character.  It  is  even  in  the  law 
of  nature  intentionally  indissoluble  ;  for  it  is  a  union  of  two  hearts, 
pledging  to  each  other  undying  love.  In  this  union  children  are 
to  be  brought  up  to  maturity  by  their  parents  ;  and  thes"e  parents, 
in  their  old  age,  are  to  be  supported  by  their  grateful  children. 
The  unity  of  the  family  is  thus  preserved  intact. 

It  is  an  article  of  Catholic  faith,  defined  in  the  /th  canon  of 
the  24th  session  of  the  Council  of  Trent,  that  the  consummated 
marriage  of  Christians  can  never  be  dissolved  as  to  the  vinculum, 
or  bond,  save  by  the  death  of  either  party.  There  is  no  exception 
to  this  rule.  The  Pope  himself  cannot  make  one,  for  he  has  no 
right  to  dispense  with  the  divine  law.  Where  there  has  been 
mutual  consent,  and  no  impediment  nor  informality,  the  married 
person  is  married  for  life.  This  doctrine  was  denied  by  Calvin, 
who  permitted  divorce,  a  vincnlo,  for  cause  of  adultery  ;  by  Luther, 
who  permitted  it  even  for  theft  or  any  sin,  or  frequent  quarreling, 
or  if  one  of  the  parties  remained  too  long  absent ;  while  Bucer 
thought  that  a  man  could  divorce  his  wife  as  often  as  he  found 
her  disagreeable  ;  and  she  could  divorce  him  for  a  similar  reason.1 

No  matter  what  crime  a  Christian  man  or  woman  commits,  it 
does  not  break  the  matrimonial  chain,  according  to  the  teaching 
of  the  Catholic  faith.  There  is,  indeed,  in  the  Catholic  Church 
a  partial  divorce  permitted.  It  is  from  bed  and  board  only,  and 
is  granted  in  the  case  of  adultery,  or  for  other  grave  causes.  The 
Church  considers  the  marriage  contract  as  indissoluble  by  its  very 
nature,  but  especially  since  its  elevation  to  the  dignity  of  a  sacra- 
ment which  represents  the  union  of  Christ  with  his  Church ; 
which  union  is  indissoluble,  for  the  Divine  Word  will  never  lay 
aside  the  humanity  which  He  assumed.  The  whole  of  Catholic 
tradition  is  in  favor  of  the  indissolubility  of  marriage.  The  testi- 
mony of  the  Fathers  on  the  subject  is  too  long  to  quote,  and  it 
may  readily  be  found  in  any  textbook  of  Catholic  theology.  The 
voice  of  universal  Catholic  tradition  on  this  matter  is  heard  in 
the  decree  of  Pope  Eugene  IV,  approving  the  Council  of  Flor- 
ence, which  gave  expression  to  the  faith  of  the  United  Greek 
1  "  De  Augustinis,  De  Re  Sacrament,"  Vol.  II,  p.  282. 


588  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

and  Latin  Churches  in  the  fifteenth  century.  "  Although  for 
cause  of  fornication,  separation  from  bed  and  board  is  allowed, 
yet  it  is  not  lawful  to  contract  another  marriage,  since  the  bond 
of  a  lawful  marriage  contract  is  perpetual." 

[The  writer  here  gives  an  extended  discussion  of  the  Biblical 
texts  bearing  on  the  question.] 

The  Anglican  branch  of  Protestantism  having  allowed  absolute 
divorce  for  cause  of  adultery,  in  fact  owing  its  very  existence  to 
the  English  king  who  divorced  his  wife  and  the  Catholic  Church 
at  the  same  time,  the  other  "  branches  M1  could  not  be  expected 
to  do  better.  The  consequence  is  that  partial  divorces  are  hardly 
understood  outside  the  Catholic  Church.  The  United  States, 
where  so  many  "  branches  "  exist,  and  where  being  in  a  majority 
they  control  civic  legislation  on  the  subject,  are  now  morally 
degraded  on  account  of  the  facility  with  which  divorces  are 
granted.  Thus  in  most  of  our  States  a  man  may  run  away  from 
his  wife  when  he  is  tired  of  her,  remain  away  from  her  for  a 
few  years  and  then  marry  another,  or  he  may  enjoy  this  privilege 
as  a  reward  of  misbehavior  for  six  months.  To  this  degree  of 
degradation  has  the  Protestant  reformation  brought  the  holy 
institution  of  marriage.  When  will  the  conservative  thinkers  in 
the  sects  and  out  of  them  do  justice  to  the  Catholic  Church  on 
this  important  matter  ?  Do  they  not  see  that  she  alone,  by  her 
unflinching  and  unyielding  position  in  regard  to  the  sanctity 
and  indissolubility  of  the  marriage  relation  is  the  only  breakwater 
to  the  advancing  tide  of  social  immorality  in  our  country  ? 

Impediments  to  legal  marriage.  The  superiority  of  the  sanction 
which  the  Catholic  Church  gives  to  domestic  society,  and  her 
protection  of  the  holy  sacrament  of  matrimony  are  further  evi- 
denced in  the  number  and  character  of  impediments  with  which 
she  has  hedged  it  in.  The  Hebrew  prohibitions  of  marriage  as 
found  in  the  book  of  Leviticus  are  in  many  respects  different 
from  those  of  the  Catholic  Church.  The  Hebrew  law  was  a 
national  dispensation  and  narrow  in  its  import.  There  was  in  it 
the  obligation  of  keeping  the  tribes  distinct  from  one  another, 
and  of  confining  the  royal  descent  and  the  priesthood  to  special 
1  I.e.,  denominations.  —  Ed. 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE        589 

families.  Hence,  certain  consanguineous  marriages  and  marriages 
of  affinity  not  permitted  by  the  Church,  were  not  only  allowed,  but 
commanded,  by  the  law  of  Moses.  The  Catholic  Church  having 
abolished  carnalism  and  enlarged  the  limits  of  charity  by  incul- 
cating the  doctrine  of  the  universal  brotherhood  of  man  through 
the  Incarnation,  set  her  face  from  the  very  first  against  the 
intermarriage  of  relatives,  among  other  reasons  for  the  purpose 
of  widening  the  relationship  of  the  family,  and  destroying  selfish- 
ness, which  is  the  foe  of  Christian  charity. 

The  broad  reverence  for  the  sacrament  of  marriage  pervades 
all  the  Church's  impediments  both  of  consanguinity  and  affinity. 
The  impediments  are  twofold,  those  which  simply  impede  so  as 
to  render  the  contract  illicit  but  not  invalid,  and  those  which 
impede  so  as  to  render  it  null  and  void.  A  special  prohibition 
as  to  time,  place,  or  person,  or  an  injunction  to  comply  with 
certain  formalities,  thus  to  marry  a  Protestant,  to  marry  without 
publication  of  banns,  would  render  a  marriage  illicit  and  sinful 
but  not  necessarily  invalid.1  Care  should  be  taken  not  to  con- 
found the  Church's  impedimenta  impedientia  with  what  are  called 
"  voidable "  contracts  in  the  civil  law.  A  marriage  which  is 
merely  illegal  in  the  eyes  of  the  Church  is  sinful,  but  not 
"voidable."  The  sin  may  be  wiped  out  by  contrition  and  sac- 
ramental confession  ;  but  the  marriage  cannot  be  annulled  even 
by  the  Pope,  unless  the  impediment  is  dirimcns,  or  one  that 
invalidates  the  contract. 

As  marriage  is  a  sacrament,  though  having  the  nature  of  a 
contract,  the  Catholic  Church  claims  exclusive  control  over  it, 
and  permits  the  State  to  legislate  only  with  regard  to  its  civil 
effects.  If  the  State  does  more  than  this,  the  Church  considers 
it  an  intrusion,  which  she  out  of  charity  or  courtesy  may  tolerate, 
provided  the  State  law  does  not  interfere  with  the  matter,  the 
form,  or  ministers  of  the  sacrament.  The  matter  is  the  consent 
of  the  parties  delivering  over  to  each  other  a  right  to  each  other's 
body  ;  the  form  is  the  consent  formally  expressed  by  words  or 

1  By  a  papal  decree  of  1907  civil  marriages  and  marriages  in  non-Catholic 
places  of  worship  are  declared  to  be  not  only  sinful  and  unlawful,  but  actually 
null  and  void.  —  Ed. 


590  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

other  signs  in  the  actual  delivery  of  this  right ;  and  the  ministers 
of  the  sacrament  are  the  contracting  parties  themselves,  the  priest 
being  only  the  minister  of  the  Church.  She  will  never  recognize 
the  doctrine  that  the  State  can  make  a  law  annulling  the  marriage 
contract  between  Christians.  In  this  matter  she  claims  absolute 
and  exclusive  jurisdiction,  limited  only  by  the  divine  and  the 
natural  law.  In  regard  to  these  diriment  impediments  the  words 
of  Blackstone  are  appropriate:  ''These  disabilities  make  the 
contract  void  ab  initio,  and  not  merely  voidable  ;  not  that  they 
dissolve  a  contract  already  formed,  but  they  render  the  parties 
incapable  of  performing  any  contract  at  all ;  they  do  not  put 
asunder  those  who  are  joined  together,  but  they  previously  hinder 
the  junction,  and,  if  any  persons  under  these  legal  incapacities 
come  together,  it  is  a  meretricious  and  not  a  matrimonial  union."  ! 

Some  of  these  "  disabilities,"  as  laid  down  in  the  canon  law,  are  as 
follows  :  solemn  vows  and  holy  orders.  The  marriage  of  nuns  and 
monks  or  of  subdeacons,  deacons,  priests  or  bishops,  is  null  and 
void.  Consanguinity,  in  the  collateral  line,  annuls  to  the  fourth 
degree  inclusive  ;  thus  the  marriage  of  cousins  is  null  and  void. 
The  disability  of  relatives  in  the  direct  line  as  to  marriage  is  un- 
limited. Those  spiritually  related  cannot  marry.  The  marriage  of 
godfather  or  godmother  with  a  godchild  or  its  parents  is  void,  as 
is  the  marriage  of  baptizer  to  baptized,  or  to  the  baptized  parents. 
The  same  law  holds  good  for  those  acting  as  godparents  in  con- 
firmation, and  to  the  same  extent  as  in  the  case  of  baptism. 

Adoption  is  another  annulling  impediment.  The  adopter  can- 
not marry  the  adopted  child  or  its  children  ;  nor  can  the  adopted 
marry  the  children  of  the  adopter,  nor  the  widow  of  the  adopter ; 
nor  can  the  adopter  marry  the  widow  of  the  adopted. 

Affinity  arising  from  a  legitimate  marriage  is  an  annulling 
impediment,  and,  like  consanguinity  in  the  collateral  line,  extends 
to  the  fourth  degree  inclusive.  If  it  arise  from  an  illicit  con- 
nection it  extends  only  to  the  second  degree.  No  man  can  marry 
his  wife's  sister  or  her  niece. 

Adultery  committed  with  a  promise  of  marriage  renders  the 
marriage  void.  The  marriage  of  an  unbaptized  person  with  one 

1  Blackstone,  Commentaries,  Bk.  I,  chap.  xv. 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE       591 

that  is  baptized  is  invalid.  The  reason  of  this  impediment  is 
evident.  The  Catholic  Church  loves  the  souls  of  her  children 
too  well  to  permit  them  to  run  the  risk  of  losing  their  faith,  or 
of  bringing  up  children  without  it ;  and  consequently,  if  possible, 
she  will  grant  no  dispensation  to  marry  an  unbeliever,  unbap- 
tized  or  baptized,  unless  the  faith  of  the  Catholic  party  and  of 
the  offspring,  should  there  be  any,  be  secured  from  molestation. 

These  are  some  of  the  chief  impediments.  It  will  be  found 
that  motives  of  sound  public  policy  and  supernatural  wisdom  have 
dictated  their  enactment.  The  relation  involved  in  consanguinity, 
affinity,  and  adoption  are  too  close  not  to  be  fenced  off  by  im- 
pediments which  are  the  sentinels  of  purity. 

But  are  there  not  cases  where  public  policy  or  private  justice 
would  prompt  a  departure  from  the  general  laws  regulating  these 
impediments  and  render  a  dispensation  not  only  useful  but  nec- 
essary ?  May  there  not  sometimes  be  a  wrong  that  can  be  righted, 
or  a  sacred  duty  that  can  be  fulfilled  only  by  removing  the  barrier 
to  a  matrimonial  disability  ?  And  is  there  no  power  on  earth 
competent  to  do  it  ?  Yes  ;  the  Catholic  Church  has  the  dispens- 
ing power,  and  she  exercises  it  through  her  head,  the  Pope,  or 
his  appointed  delegate.  Most  of  the  impediments  are  of  purely 
ecclesiastical  origin.  The  Church  made  them.  The  Church  for 
good  reasons  can  unmake  them.  The  vicar  of  Christ,  the  suc- 
cessor of  St.  Peter,  who  holds  the  keys  of  apostolic  power  to 
bind  or  loose  according  to  the  commission  given  to  him  as  infal- 
lible teacher  and  supreme  legislator  for  God's  people,  uses  the 
dispensing  power  wherever  the  good  of  society,  or  of  religion,  or 
the  eternal  salvation  of  souls  may  require  it.  That  he,  as  the 
chief  spiritual  authority  in  Christendom,  should  have  this  power 
is  implicitly,  though  unintentionally,  conceded  in  those  wortis  of 
Blackstone  :  "The  punishment  therefore  or  annulling  of  inces- 
tuous or  other  unscriptural  marriages  is  the  province  of  the 
spiritual  courts,  which  act  pro  salute  animarum." 

The  power  to  annul  is  correlative  with  the  power  to  dispense. 
Unfortunately,  however,  some  of  the  civil  powers  have  not  been 
willing  to  leave  marriage  to  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Church  ;  con- 
sidering it  as  a  mere  profane  contract,  they  have  loosened  its  bond 


592  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

and  destroyed  the  whole  order  of  society,  as  the  condition  of  the 
countries  —  France  for  instance  —  proves  where  the  sacramental 
character  of  marriage  has  been  ignored.  There  is  no  remedy  for 
this  perturbation  of  the  moral  order  but  a  return  to  the  doctrine 
of  the  Holy  Catholic  Church.  She  teaches  that  marriage  is  a 
holy  sacrament,  and  that  the  Christian  family,  of  which  it  is  the 
corner  stone,  has  its  prototype  in  the  Holy  Trinity  itself.  Just  as 
in  the  divine  family  there  are  three  in  one,  the  Father,  the  Son, 
and  the  Holy  Ghost,  bound  together  by  eternal  and  indissoluble 
love,  so  in  the  human  family  there  are  the  husband,  wife  and 
child  bound  together  by  mutual  and  indissoluble  love.  As  Christ 
had  two  natures  united  in  one  person,  so  in  marriage  there  are 
two  persons'  in  one  flesh,  but  considered  as  only  one  moral  per- 
son. Christ  is  the  head  of  the  Church ;  the  husband  is  the  head 
of  the  family.  The  Church  is  Christ's  spouse,  whom  he  nour- 
ishes with  infallible  doctrine  and  vivifies  with  his  perpetual  pres- 
ence, which  fructifies  and  fecundates,  producing  children  of  God 
and  heirs  of  heaven  ;  as  the  husband  in  the  sacrament  of  mar- 
riage protects  and  supports  the  partner  of  his  bosom  and  brings 
up  children  in  the  order  of  nature  to  be  raised  by  the  grace  of 
baptism  to  the  supernatural  order.  Christ  has  promised  to  remain 
with  his  Church  all  days,  even  to  the  consummation  of  the 
world ;  and  the  Christian  husband  and  wife  in  the  sacrament  of 
marriage  pledge  fidelity  to  each  other  to  the  end  of  their  lives. 
Christ  in  the  Church  deserts  the  soul  that  mortally  sins,  but  His 
significant  grace  deserts  no  man,  and  the  stamp  of  baptism  always 
remains.  The  repentant  sinner  is  always  welcome  to  His  divine 
arms.  There  has  been,  as  it  were,  a  partial  divorce  between  him 
and  his  Redeemer ;  something  like  the  divorce  from  bed  and 
board  which  may  take  place  among  married  Christians.  The 
blessing  of  Christ  is  on  the  married  couple  from  the  beginning ; 
the  ring  that  symbolizes  their  union  is  blessed,  and  abundant 
graces  are  showered  upon  them  through  the  sacrament,  enabling 
them  to  bring  up  their  children  in  the  fear  and  love  of  God. 
This  is  the  only  doctrine  that  will  sanctify  the  family  and  save  the 
State  ;  and  this  is  the  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Catholic  Church  alone. 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE        593 

58.    PROTESTANT  DOCTRINE  OF  MARRIAGE  AND  DIVORCE1 

As  TO  THE  NATURE  OF  MARRIAGE 

In  its  practical  results,  therefore,  the  Reformation  had  little 
effect  on  law  and  theory  as  to  the  form  of  wedlock.  For  Eng- 
land it  had  no  significance  at  all ;  and  the  same  is  true  of  Germany, 
except  so  far  as  Luther's  view  of  the  sponsalia  may  have  found 
some  expression  in  legislation  and  judicial  decree.  With  respect 
to  the  nature  of  marriage  the  case  is  very  different.  The  dogma 
of  its  sacramental  character  was  abandoned  throughout  the  Prot- 
estant world.  In  its.  place  a  new  conception  arose ;  and  it  is  very 
instructive  to  trace  the  process  of  change  in  the  mind  of  Luther 
himself.  As  late  as  1519  he  declares  that  "the  marriage  state 
is  a  sacrament,"  an  outward  " symbol  of  the  greatest,  holiest, 
noblest,  most  worthy  thing  that  has  ever  existed  or  can  exist : 
the  union  of  the  divine  and  human  natures  in  Christ " ;  and  this 
symbol  he  explains  entirely  in  harmony  with  the  "  dogmatism  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  notably  that  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  who 
sought  the  motive  of  the  marriage  sacrament  in  legalization  of  the 
sensual  impulse."  In  the  very  next  year,  however,  and  again  in 
1 5  39>  ne  expresses  himself  decisively  against  the  ancient  Catholic 
doctrine.2  Nevertheless,  in  his  various  attempts  to  define  the 
matrimonial  state  an  apparent  contradiction  is  presented  which  is 
hard  to  reconcile,  and  which  is  of  great  significance  in  the  long 
struggle  for  the  instituting  of  civil  marriage.  On  the  one  hand, 
though  not  technically  a  sacrament,  marriage  is  described  as 
holy,  a  "most  spiritual"  status,  "ordained  and  founded"  by  God 
himself.  It  is  the  source  of  domestic  and  public  government,  the 
foundation  of  human  society,  which  without  it  would  "fall  to 
pieces."  So  holy  is  the  state  of  matrimony,  in  Luther's  con- 
ception, that  he  must  perforce  still  use  the  term  "sacrament"  to 
convey  his  meaning.  On  the  other  hand,  his  writings  contain 

1  By  George   Eliot    Howard.    From    A   History   of    Matrimonial    Institutions, 
Vol.  I,  pp.  386-388  ;  Vol.  II,  pp.  60-67,  71"?2-    Tne  University  of  Chicago  Press, 
Chicago,  1904.    (Most  of  the  bibliographical  notes  are  omitted.) 

2  Luther,  Von  der  Babylonischen    Gefengkniss  der  Kirchen ;  idem,  Von  den 
Conciliis  und  Kirchen  (1539). 


594  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

passages  of  a  very  different  tenor.  "  So  many  lands,  so  many 
customs,  runs  the  common  saying.  Therefore  since  weddings 
and  matrimony  are  a  temporal  business,  it  becomes  us  clerks  and 
servants  of  the  church  to  order  or  rule  nothing  therein,  but  to 
leave  to  each  city  and  state  its  own  usages  and  customs  in  this 
regard."  Elsewhere,  in  words  which  anticipate  the  sentiment  of 
Milton  by  a  hundred  years,  he  insists  that  "matrimonial  questions 
do  not  touch  the  conscience,  but  belong  to  the  temporal  power," 
warning  the  clergy  not  to  meddle  with  them  unless  commanded 
by  that  authority.  Marriage,  he  emphatically  declares,  is  a 
"temporal,  worldly  thing,"  which  "does  not  concern  the  church." 
Thus  Luther  provided  the  arsenal  from  which  both  the  friends 
and  the  foes  of  civil  marriage  drew  their  weapons. 

THE  PROTESTANT  DOCTRINE  OF  DIVORCE 

(a]  Opinions  of  LntJicr  and  the  Continental  reformers.  — 
With  the  rejection  of  the  sacramental  theory  of  marriage  at  the 
Reformation  it  was  inevitable  that  more  liberal  ideas  respecting 
divorce  should  arise.  The  mother  church  was  accused  of  fostering 
vice  by  professing  a  doctrine  too  severe  j1  while  at  the  same  time 
she  was  bitterly  reproached  with  a  scandalous  abuse  of  her  own 
jurisdiction  through  which  in  effect  the  forbidden  degrees  had  be- 
come an  open  door  to  divorce  for  the  use  of  the  rich  and  power- 
ful. Accordingly,  the  leaders  of  Protestantism  took  intermediate 
ground.  On  the  one  hand,  while  Luther  and  some  other  reformers 
sanctioned  temporary  separations  of  husband  and  wife,  there  was 
a  strong  tendency  to  reject  entirely  perpetual  divorce  a  incnsa  ct 
tJioro  as  being  a  "relatively  modern  invention"  unknown  to  the 

1  The  writings  of  Luther,  Milton,  and  other  Reformation  and  Puritan  writers 
abound  in  examples  of  such  charges.  "For  no  cause,  honest  or  necessary,"  says 
Martin  Bucer,  "will  they  permit  a  final  divorce  :  in  the  meanwhile,  whoredoms 
and  adulteries,  and  worse  things  than  these,  not  only  tolerating  in  themselves  and 
others,  but  cherishing  and  throwing  men  headlong  into  these  evils.  For  although 
they  also  disjoin  married  persons  from  board  and  bed,  that  is,  from  all  conjugal 
society  and  communion,  and  this  not  only  for  adultery,  but  for  ill  usage,  and 
matrimonial  duties  denied  ;  yet  they  forbid  those  thus  parted  to  join  in  wedlock 
with  others  :  but,  as  I  said  before,  any  dishonest  associating  they  permit."  -  "  The 
Judgment  of  Martin  Mucer,"  in  Milton's  Prose  Works,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  292. 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE        595 

ancient  Church  ;  and  a  condition  of  life  incompatible  with  the 
true  ideal  of  wedlock.  On  the  other  hand,  they  generally  favored 
complete  divorce  a  vincnlo,  admitting  two  or  more  grounds 
according  as  they  interpreted  strictly  or  more  liberally  the  scrip- 
tural texts.  For  they  still  appealed  to  authority  rather  than  to 
reason  and  experience  in  their  attempts  to  solve  a  great  social 
problem.  They  were  thus  often  sorely  embarrassed.  Their  writ- 
ings, indeed,  reveal  not  a  little  of  the  casuistry  and  self-deception 
which  so  often  vitiate  the  reasoning  of  the  canonists  and  their 
predecessors.1 

From  the  outset  the  Continental  reformers  took  a  bold  stand ; 2 
for  the  Protestant  doctrine  of  divorce,  like  the  Protestant  con- 
ception of  the  form  and  nature  of  marriage,  was  shaped  mainly 
by  the  thought  of  Martin  Luther.  Yet  revolutionary  as  were  his 
teachings,  he  did  not  go  so  far  in  his  departure  from  the  orthodox 
rule  as  did  some  of  his  contemporaries  and  successors.  The 
analysis  of  Richter  has  disclosed  two  distinct  tendencies  in  the 
doctrine  and  practice  of  the  Reformation  period.  In  the  six- 
teenth century  the  more  rigid  or  conservative  direction  is  taken 
by  Luther  and  the  more  influential  Protestant  leaders,  among 
whom  are  the  theologians  Brenz,  Bugenhagen,  Chemnitz,  Calvin, 
and  Beza,  with  the  jurists  Kling,  Beust,  and  Schneidewin.  All 
are  agreed  that  absolute  divorce  should  be  granted  for  adultery, 
although  some  of  them,  like  Chemnitz,  appear  to  discriminate 
against  the  woman  in  this  regard.  Malicious  desertion  is  also 
generally  admitted  as  a  second  cause  for, the  full  dissolution  of 
wedlock,  following  the  same  Bible  text  which  gave  rise  to  the 
casus  apostoli  of  the  canonists.3  It  is  characteristic  of  Luther 
and  the  representatives  of  the  more  rigid  tendency  that,  rather 
than  multiply  the  number  of  admissible  grounds  of  divorce,  an 
effort  was  made  by  hard  logic  to  broaden  the  definition  of  deser- 
tion so  as  to  give  to  it  a  wide  range  without  seeming  to  transgress 

1  For  example,   see    Milton's    specious    argument,   following   the    allegorical 
method    of    some    of   the    early    theologians,    to    show    the   scope   of  the  term 
"fornication"  as  used  by  Jesus  and   Moses:    "Doctrine   and   Discipline  of  Di- 
vorce," Prose  Works,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  251-258,  394-401. 

2  See  Milion's  summary  of  their  views  :  "  Tetrachordon,"  loc.  cit.,  pp.  423-433. 

3  i  Cor.  vii,  i  5. 


596  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  letter  of  scriptural  authority.1  In  this  way,  for  instance, 
saevitia,  or  cruelty,  was  included,  as  was  also  refusal  of  conjugal 
duty,  eventually  giving  rise  to  the  doctrine  of  "quasi-desertion." 
But  for  this  last  cause  a  marriage  must  not  be  dissolved  except 
on  failure  of  all  prescribed  means,  however  cruel,  to  induce 
reconciliation  or  submission.  For  it  was  a  natural  result  of  the 
carnal  theory  of  wedlock  that  theological  dogma  and  church  ordi- 
nance alike  in  effect  permitted  a  brutal  husband,  through  the  aid 
of  fine,  exile,  or  imprisonment,  to  force  an  unwilling  wife  to 
render  him  her  "conjugal  duty." 

Only  two  general  causes  of  full  divorce  on  alleged  scriptural 
authority  were  thus  admitted  by  Luther  and  his  immediate  fol- 
lowers. Other  offenses,  except  as  by  logical  fiction  brought  under 
the  definition  of  desertion  or  adultery,  were  merely  accepted  as 
grounds  of  temporary  separation  from  bed  and  board,  subject  to 
reconciliation.2  On  the  other  hand,  the  representatives  of  the 
more  liberal  tendency  anticipated  in  many  ways  modern  ideas  as 

1  As  early  as  1520  in  his  Von  dem  bab.  Gefangniss  der  Kirche  (Strampff,  pp. 
349'  35°'  3&  !>  31^2)  Luther  admits  the  two  grounds  of  divorce,  adultery  and  de- 
sertion; the  latter  when  either  spouse  abandons  the  other  "iiber  zehenjahr  oder 
nimmer  wiederkommen."  Two  years  later,  in  his  Vom  ehelichen  Leben,  he  ap- 
pears to  regard  refusal  of  conjugal  duty  as  equivalent  to  desertion.  "  We  may 
find  an  obstinate  woman,"  he  says,  "who  stiffens  her  neck,  and  if  her  husband 
should  fall  ten  times  into  unchastity,  cares  nothing  about  it.  Here  it  is  time  for  a 
man  to  say,  '  if  you  won't,  another  can  be  found  that  will.  If  the  wife  will  not,  let 
the  maid  come.'  Yet  let  it  be  so  that  the  husband  give  her  two  or  three  warn- 
ings beforehand,  and  let  the  matter  come  before  other  people,  so  that  her 
obstinacy  may  be  known  and  rebuked  before  the  congregation.  If  she  will 
not,  let  her  be  gone,  and  procure  an  Esther  for  yourself  and  let  Vashti  be  off, 
as  Ahasuerus  did."  —  As  rendered  by  Woolsey,  Divorce,  pp.  130,  131.  For 
the  original  see  Strampff,  pp.  350,  351,  394,  395;  Luther's  Kleinere  Schriften, 
Vol.  II,  pp.  26-31;  and  Sarcerius,  Vom  heil.  Ehestande,  pp.  137,  138. 

-  Luther  does  not  allow  absolute  divorce  on  account  of  anger  or  incompatibil- 
ity, insidiae,  or  attempts  upon  life,  exile,  sickness,  incurable  disease,  misfortune 
to  an  innocent  spouse,  or  similar  grounds  :  see  his  Von  Ehesachen,  in  Strampff, 
pp.  398,  399  ;  Vom  chcl.  Leben,  ibid.,  p.  400  ;  Predigt  von  dem  Ehestande  (1525), 
ibid.,  p.  400;  and  Auslegung  des  7.  Cap.  i  Cor.  (1523).  ibid.,  pp.  397,  398, 
where  only  temporary  separation  is  allowed,  unless  one  of  the  parties  refuses 
reconciliation  and  the  other  "kunnt  nicht  halten,"  but  in  this  case  the  "separa- 
tion has  the  refusal  of  conjugal  duty  as  a  consequence,  or  it  has  become  malicious 
desertion  "  (Strampff,  pp.  351,  352,  382.  396  ff.).  Cf.  ISrenz.  Wie  yn  Ehesachen 
.  .  .  zu  Ilandeln  :  in  Sarcerius,  Vom  heil.  Lhestande,  pp.  155  ff.  ;  Dietrich,  Evang. 
Kheschcidungsrecht,  pp.  31  ff . ;  I lauber,  Ehescheid.  im  Reformat.,  Vol.  II,  pp.  242  ff. 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE        597 

to  the  grounds  of  absolute  dissolution  of  the  marriage  bond. 
Avoiding  to  some  extent  the  indirect  method  of  attaining  prac- 
tical ends  by  juggling  with  definitions,  they  were  inclined  to 
appeal  for  authority  directly  to  Roman  imperial  legislation  ;  and 
so,  "  since  the  other  direction  is  connected  with  the  canon  law, 
we  have  here  a  phase  of  the  struggle  "  between  that  system  and 
the  Roman  jurisprudence.  The  first  step  in  the  liberal  direction 
is  taken  by  Erasmus,  who  sustains  a  rational  method  of  dealing 
with  the  divorce  problem  through  appeal  to  the  teachings  of  the 
early  Fathers,  notably  those  of  Origen  ;  and  this  brought  him  in 
contact  with  the  principles  of  the  old  Roman  law.  His  influence, 
as  Richter  strongly  urges,  seems  to  have  been  felt  by  Zwingli, 
who,  with  his  disciple  Bullinger,  argues  that  in  admitting  adultery 
as  a  cause  of  divorce  the  Scriptures  sanction  as  such  all  equal  or 
graver  offenses.  Accordingly,  in  the  Zurich  marriage  ordinance 
of  1525,  "adultery,  malicious  desertion,  and  plotting  against  the 
life  of  a  consort  are  not  regarded  as  the  only  causes,  but  rather 
as  the  standard  causes  of  divorce,  and  to  the  judge  it  is  left  to 
decide  what  others  shall  be  put  by  their  side.  And  not  only  this,- 
but  cruelty,  madness,  leprosy,  are  mentioned  as  causes  which  the 
judge  can  take  into  account."  Lambert  of  Avignon  is  likewise 
conspicuous  for  liberal  ideas  regarding  the  causes  of  divorce. 
Anticipating  the  principle  so  often  enforced  by  modern  legis- 
lation, he  holds  that  wrhen  a  wife  is  forced  by  intolerable  suffer- 
ing to  leave  the  husband  who  mistreats  her  and  denies  her  proper 
support,  this  should  be  counted  as  repudiation  by  the  man,  and 
not  as  desertion  by  the  woman,  who  should  therefore  be  allowed 
to  contract  another  marriage.  Similar  views  are  held  by  Bucer, 
Melanchthon,  and  the  jurist  Monner.  All  accept  the  two  general 
causes,  and  each  admits  several  other  grounds. 

With  no  exception  in  case  of  divorce,  the  Continental  reformers 
appear  to  sanction  the  remarriage  of  the  innocent  man  or  woman 
without  any  delay  or  other  condition.1  The  earliest  church  ordi- 
nances confer  the  same  privilege ;  but  regarding  the  question 

1  Of  course,  after  regular  process  was  somewhat  developed  the  toJcniunis, 
or  permission  of  the  magistrate  concluding  the  decree,  was  requisite  to  the 
remarriage  even  of  the  innocent  person. 


598  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

whether  an  adulterous  spouse  should  be  suffered  to  contract  fur- 
ther wedlock  the  Protestant  leaders  are  not  agreed.  The  majority 
would  have  the  magistrate  deal  with  the  offender  according  to 
the  harsh  principle  of  the  Jewish  law.  Such  is  the  view  of 
Bugenhagen,  who  opens  his  discussion  with  the  curt  remark  that 
were  the  adulterer  hanged  there  would  be  small  need  of  further 
parley.  Lambert  of  Avignon  insists  that  the  culprit  ought  to  be 
stoned,  warning  the  sluggish  magistrates  that  they  themselves 
perish  even  because  they  do  not  administer  this  punishment. 
Beust,  on  the  contrary,  prides  himself  that  in  the  land  of  the 
Saxons  there  is  no  flinching  in  this  regard,  and  so  the  divorce 
question  in  that  country  is  solved.  Beza  and  Brenz  are  both  eager 
for  the  death  penalty.  Melanchthon  appears  to  favor  the  same 
treatment,  or  else  exile  of  the  guilty  spouse  in  case  the  political 
magistrate  is  unwilling  to  proceed  with  such  rigor ;  for  he  says 
the  "condemned  is  as  one  dead"  to  his  innocent  spouse.  Similar 
is  the  position  of  Luther,  who  "insists  with  great  energy  that 
death  ought  to  be  the  penalty  for  adultery,  but  since  the  civil  rulers 
are  slack  and  indulgent  in  this  respect,  he  would  permit  the 
criminal,  if  he  must  live,  to  go  away  to  some  remote  place  and 
there  marry  again.  So  Calvin,  in  several  places,  declares  that 
death  ought  to  be  inflicted  for  this  crime,  as  it  was  by  the  Mosaic 
code,  but  if  the  law  of  the  territory  stop  short  of  this  righteous 
penalty,  the  smallest  evil  is  to  grant  liberty  of  remarriage  in 
such  cases." 

(b)  Opinions  of  the  EnglisJi  reformers.  —  The  Fathers  of  Eng- 
lish Protestantism  as  a  body  are  more  conservative  than  their 
brethren  across  the  channel.1  By  the  chiefs  of  the  really  reform- 
ing, or  Puritan,  party  among  them,  however,  ideas  scarcely  less 
bold  than  those  of  Luther  or  Calvin  are  advanced.  The  same 
arguments  are  used  and  the  same  causes  of  separation  are  ad- 
mitted. But  these  ideas  ultimately  find  no  place  in  the  canons 
of  the  established  church. 

1  Cf.  Lecky,  Democracy  and  Liberty,  Vol.  II,  p.  200;  Glasson,  Le  mariage 
civil  et  le  divorce,  pp.  310,  311;  and  idem,  Ilistoire  du  droit,  Vol.  V,  pp.  89  ff. 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE        599 

59.    THE  SOCIAL  GOSPEL  OF  DIVORCE1 

The  proper  approach  to  this  very  delicate  and  difficult  subject 
is  through  the  family  as  an  institution.  From  Jesus'  point  of  view 
of  the  sanctity  and  divine  origin  of  the  family  as  a  social  institu- 
tion, his  position  as  to  divorce  is  inevitable.  As  law  did  not 
create  marriage,  so  it  cannot  break  it.  "  What  God  hath  joined 
together,  let  not  man  put  asunder." 

This  general  principle  Jesus  carries  out  into  detail  more  than 
is  customary  in  his  teaching.  There  are  many  subjects  upon 
which  the  world  has  sought  his  elaborated  opinion,  only  to  be 
disappointed  ;  but  in  the  matter  of  marriage  and  divorce  he  car- 
ries his  instruction  out  into  the  nearest  approach  which  he  ever 
makes  to  actual  legislation.  The  marriage  union  is  never  to  be 
broken  unless,  possibly,  through  the  unfaithfulness  of  one  of  the 
parties  (Matt,  v,  32  ;  xix,  9). 

This  radical  teaching  of  Jesus  is  even  more  marked  when  one 
recalls  that  it  was  in  express  opposition  to  the  trend  of  custom 
among  the  Jews.  The  Semitic  nations  never  regarded  divorce  of 
the  wife  by  the  husband  as  a  very  difficult  matter.  In  the  time 
of  Jesus  the  custom  was  growing  more  frequent,  as  the  more 
liberal  rabbis  made  the  grounds  of  divorce  ever  more  numerous. 
More  than  that,  Jesus'  words  were  addressed  explicitly  to  those 
who  asked  him  concerning  the  rightfulness  of  divorce.  The  only 
conclusion  that  can  be  safely  drawn  is  that  Jesus  regarded  mar- 
riage as  such  a  final  union  of  two  lives  as  to  be  indissoluble, 
barring  the  one  possible  exception. 

But  one  must  not  mistake  here.  To  treat  this  one  exception 
as  justifying  the  easy-going  divorce  legislation  of  the  present  day 
is  absurd.  Even  more  absurd  would  it  be  to  insist  that  Jesus 
commended  a  divorce  under  any  circumstances.  His  reply  to  the 
Saclducees  was,  it  is  true,  a  recognition  of  the  legitimacy  of  the 
Mosaic  legislation  concerning  divorce,  but  even  then  only  as  a 
compromise  with  the  divine  order.  Remarriage  of  divorced  per- 
sons he  regarded  as  adultery.  The  ideal  of  the  family  which  he 

1  By  Shailer  Mathews.  From  The  Social  Gospel,  pp.  41-46.  The  Griffith  and 
Rowland  Press,  Boston,  1910. 


600  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

sets  up  is  evidently  one  which  is  practicable  in  a  strict  sense  only 
among  those  who  conform  to  the  Christian  conception  of  human 
relations. 

Clearly  there  is  in  the  social  gospel  no  justification  of  the  per- 
version of  family  relations  exhibited  in  our  divorce  courts.  The 
place  of  cure,  however,  does  not  lie  in  such  courts,  but  in  the 
home  itself.  Divorce  between  Christian  husband  and  wife  should 
not  even  be  mentioned.  The  principle  of  love,  which  would  lead 
a  man  to  leave  his  offering  at  the  altar  until  he  had  become 
reconciled  to  his  brother,  is  certainly  applicable  to  the  Christian 
family.  And  far  more  than  is  usually  believed,  the  same  prin- 
ciple will  hold  among  those  who  do  not  claim  to  be  disciples  of 
Jesus.  Whatever  exceptional  cases  may  arise,  the  fundamental 
principles  of  Jesus  in  application  to  the  family  life  would  prevent 
divorce  and  maintain  the  family. 

In  order  to  establish  a  home  that  shall  be  permanent  and  indis- 
soluble, it  is  necessary  to  rely  upon  something  more  than  social 
conventions.  They  are,  of  course,  helpful  and  in  some  cases 
serve  as  admirable  social  buttresses.  It  is  highly  desirable  that 
unjustifiable  divorce  should  subject  its  parties  to  social  loss.  But 
as  the  experience  of  the  church  of  Corinth  shows,  social  customs 
are  not  to  be  substituted  for  Christian  principles.  Back  of  all 
customs  there  must  be  the  purity  of  life  that  maintains  the  sanc- 
tity of  marriage  in  the  heart.  To  commit  adultery  therein  is  in 
some  particulars  as  monstrous  a  crime  as  open  breaking  of  the 
marriage  laws  ;  and  it  is  scarcely  less  dangerous  to  marriage  as 
an  institution.  The  Christian  citizen  will  do  well  to  guard  against 
all  the  incitements  both  of  the  theater  and  of  literature,  of  dress 
and  of  custom,  which  prompt  to  that  dissolution  of  the  marriage 
tie  which  results  from  the  perverted  soul.  Here,  as  in  all  social 
relations,  the  Christian  is  concerned  primarily  with  the  quality  of 
life.  Out  from  life  itself  flows  that  which  either  establishes  or 
destroys  social  institutions. 

No  modification  of  this  position  is  to  be  based  on  the  teaching 
of  Jesus  that,  sacred  as  the  family  really  is,  marriage  is,  after  all, 
only  physical,  intended  for  an  age  of  physical  existence.  "  In  the 
resurrection,"  says  Jrsus,  "  there  is  to  be  no  marriage."  No  one 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE        60 1 

can  interpret  such  a  view  as  in  any  way  a  reflection  on  the  sanc- 
tity of  the  institution.  Jesus  never  thought  about  so-called  "  soul 
marriages."  At  most  he  is  here  simply  emphasizing  the  differ- 
ence between  the  two  modes  of  life  which  are  implied  in  the  dif- 
ferences between  two  ages.  It  would  be  altogether  illegitimate  to 
infer  that  he  would  admit  divorces  among  his  disciples  in  case  of 
so-called  "  incompatibility  of  temper  "  or  the  destruction  of  con- 
jugal love.  Neither  of  these  unfair  interpretations  falls  within  the 
possible  exception  already  noted  to  his  general  teaching.  Jesus 
would  urge  that  a  family  once  founded  upon  love  is  to  be  main- 
tained by  the  maintenance  of  that  love.  The  more  danger  there 
is  of  that  passing,  the  more  effort  should  be  made  to  retain  it. 
Reconciliation  and  spiritual  unity  are  two  elementary  expressions 
of  that  love,  which  is  a  precondition  of  all  Jesus'  social  teaching. 
In  other  words,  divorce  is  impossible  in  the  persistently  and 
genuinely  Christian  home.  And  such  a  home  should  be  the 
model  for  all  others. 

How  far  these  Christian  ideals  should  be  involved  in  legisla- 
tion is,  and  is  likely  to  be  always,  a  matter  of  some  dispute.  But 
this  much  is  clear  :  All  legislation  protecting  the  family  should 
move  in  the  direction  of  the  ideal  set  by  Jesus.  In  the  same 
proportion  as  the  public  mind  becomes  filled  with  the  spirit  of 
the  gospel  will  this  become  inevitable.  Even  if  complete  recogni- 
tion and  realization  of  the  ideals  of  Jesus  for  the  family  are  pos- 
sible only  among  those  whose  lives  are  embodying  the  spirit  of 
Jesus,  a  society  controlled  by  absolutely  unchristian  ideals  as  to 
the  family  is  incredible.  It  would  fall  to  pieces  in  the  home. 
Yet,  we  should  probably  all  admit  that,  as  long  as  sin  is  harm- 
ful, some  allowance  is  rightly  made  by  law  for  the  protection  of 
its  victims  in  the  family.  For  this  seems  recognized  by  Jesus  in 
his  estimate  of  the  Mosaic  permission  of  divorce.  The  great 
principle  of  love  would  not  permit  society  to  leave  either  member 
of  a  family  at  the  mercy  of  a  dangerous  life  partner.  To-day,  as 
in  the  time  of  Moses,  an  absolute  ideal  can  be  only  to  some 
extent  approximated  because  of  sin,  which  sometimes  makes  the 
sacrifice  of  ideals  necessary  in  legislation.  But  this  is  at  best  a 
departure  from  the  ideals  of  the  gospel.  If  men  and  women 


602  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

were  all  that  they  should  be,  it  would  be  unneeded.  In  our  prac- 
tical legislation  this  concession  to  the  needs  of  the  injured  party 
should  not  be  made  into  a  principle.  The  progress  of  the  gospel 
should  make  it  unnecessary.  For  in  such  progress  the  sanctity  of 
the  family  would  never  come  into  question,  and  we  should  be  free 
from  one  growing  habit  —  to  overlook  divorce  and  allow  full  social 
privileges  to  those  divorced  on  unscriptural  grounds.  The  gospel 
has  higher  ideals  for  the  family  than  has  the  divorce  court. 

60.    THE  REPRESSIVE    INFLUENCE  OF  MARRIAGE  UPON 
INDIVIDUALITY1 

Mrs.  Augusta  Webster  amusingly  points  out  the  inconsistencies 
of  popular  notions  on  this  subject.  She  says  : 

People  think  women  who  do  not  want  to  marry  unfeminine ;  people  think 
women  who  do  want  to  marry  immodest :  people  combine  both  opinions  by 
regarding  it  as  unfeminine  for  women  not  to  look  forward  longingly  to  wife- 
hood  as  the  hope  and  purpose  of  their  lives,  and  ridiculing  and  contemning 
any  individual  woman  of  their  acquaintance  whom  they  suspect  of  entertain- 
ing such  a  longing.  They  must  wish  and  not  wish ;  they  must  by  no  means 
give  and  they  must  certainly  not  withhold  encouragement  —  and  so  it  goes  on, 
each  precept  canceling  the  last,  and  most  of  them  negative. 

There  are,  doubtless,  equally  absurd  prejudices  which  hamper  a 
man's  freedom  by  teaching  girls  and  their  friends  to  look  for 
proposals  of  marriage,  instead  of  regarding  signs  of  interest  in  a 
more  wholesome  spirit.  It  is  certain  that  we  shall  never  have  a 
world  really  worth  living  in,  until  men  and  women  can  show 
interest  in  one  another  without  being  driven  either  to  marry  or 
to  forego  altogether  the  pleasure  and  the  profit  of  frequent  meet- 
ing. Nor  will  the  world  be  really  a  pleasant  world  while  it  con- 
tinues to  make  friendship  between  persons  of  opposite  sexes 
well-nigh  impossible,  by  insisting  that  they  arc  so,  and  thereby, 
in  a  thousand  direct  and  indirect  ways,  bringing  about  the  fulfill- 
ment of  its  own  prophecy.  All  this  false  sentiment,  with  the 
restrictions  it  implies,  makes  the  ideal  marriage  —  that  is,  a  union 

1  By  Mona  C'aird.  Adapted  from  The  Morality  of  Marriage,  pp.  102-109, 
143-145.  George  Redway,  London,  1897. 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE        603 

prompted  by  harmony  of  nature  and  by  friendship  —  almost  beyond 
the  reach  of  this  generation. 

"At  last,"  another  lady  bursts  forth,  "  we  have  some  one  among  us  with  wit 
to  perceive  that  the  life  which  a  woman  leads  with  the  ordinary  sherry-drinking, 
cigar-smoking  husband  is  no  better  than  that  of  an  Eastern  slave.  Take  my 
own  case,  which  is  that  of  thousands  of  others  in  our  land.  I  belong  to  my 
lord  and  master,  body  and  soul.  The  duties  of  a  housekeeper,  upper  nurse, 
and  governess  are  required  of  me.  I  am  expected  to  be  always  at  home,  at  my 
husband's  beck  and  call.  It  is  true  that  he  feeds  me,  and  that  for  his  own 
glorification  he  gives  me  handsome  clothing.  It  is  also  true  that  he  does  not 
beat  me.  For  this  I  ought,  of  course,  to  be  duly  grateful ;  but  I  often  think  of 
what  you  say  on  the  wife  and  servant  question,  and  wonder  how  many  of  us 
would  like  to  have  the  cook's  privilege  of  being  able  to  give  warning  to  leave." 

If  the  wife  feels  thus,  we  may  be  sure  the  husband  thinks  he 
has  his  grievances  also ;  and  when  we  place  this  description  side 
by  side  with  that  of  the  unhappy  plight  of  bored  husbands  com- 
miserated by  Mrs.  Lynn  Linton,  there  is  no  escaping  the  im- 
pression that  there  is  something  very  "rotten  in  the  state  of 
Denmark."  Amongst  other  absurdities,  we  have  well-meaning 
husbands  and  wives  harassing  one  another  to  death,  for  no  reason 
in  the  world  but  the  desire  of  conforming  to  current  notions 
regarding  the  proper  conduct  of  married  people.  These  victims 
are  expected  to  go  about  perpetually  together,  as  if  they  were  a 
pair  of  carriage  horses  ;  to  be  forever  holding  claims  over  one 
another,  exacting  or  making  useless  sacrifices,  and  generally  get- 
ting in  one  another's  way,  with  a  diligence  and  self-forgetfulness 
that  would  be  admirable  were  it  not  so  supremely  ridiculous. 
The  man  who  marries  finds  that  his  liberty  has  gone,  and  the 
woman  exchanges  one  set  of  restrictions  for  another.  She  thinks 
herself  neglected  if  the  husband  does  not  always  return  to  her 
in  the  evenings,  and  the  husband  and  society  think  her  unduti- 
ful,  frivolous,  and  so  forth,  if  she  does  not  stay  at  home  alone, 
trying  to  sigh  him  back  again.  The  luckless  man  finds  his  wife 
so  very  much  confined  to  her  "proper  sphere,"  that  she  is,  per- 
chance, more  exemplary  than  entertaining.  Still,  she  may  look 
injured  and  resigned,  but  she  must  not  seek  society  and  occupa- 
tion on  her  own  account,  bringing  new  interest  and  knowledge 
into  the  joint  existence,  and  becoming  thus  a  contented,  cultivated, 


604  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

and  agreeable  human  being.  No  wonder  that,  while  all  this  is 
forbidden,  we  have  so  many  unhappy  wives  and  bored  husbands. 
The  more  admirable  the  wives,  the  more  profoundly  bored  the 
husbands. 

Doubtless  there  are  bright  exceptions  to  this  picture  of  married 
life,  but  we  are  not  dealing  with  exceptions.  In  most  cases,  the 
chain  of  marriage  frets  and  chafes,  if  it  does  not  make  a  serious 
wound ;  and  where  there  is  happiness  —  as  we  are  so  often 
assured  that  there  is  —  it  is  dearly  bought,  and  is  not  often  on  a 
very  high  plane.  For  husband  and  wife  are  then  apt  to  forget 
everything  in  the  narrow  interests  of  their  home,  to  depend 
entirely  upon  one  another,  to  steep  themselves  in  the  same  ideas, 
till  they  become  mere  echoes,  half-creatures,  useless  to  their  kind, 
because  they  have  let  individuality  die.  There  are  few  things 
more  stolidly  irritating  than  a  very  "united"  couple.  The  like- 
ness in  appearance  and  gesture  that  may  often  be  remarked 
between  married  people,  is  a  melancholy  instance  of  this  com- 
munal form  of  degeneration.  This  condition,  be  it  observed,  is 
the  very  antithesis  of  that  deep  and  real  unity  of  two  individual- 
ities, which  are  harmonious  just  because  they  are  not  identical  — 
as  two  colors,  for  example,  may  be  exquisite  in  harmony,  where 
a  mere  repetition  of  the  same  tint,  in  two  nominally  separate 
objects,  would  create  nothing  but  a  tiring  monotony. 

The  tyrannical  spirit  has  little  or  no  check  under  present  con- 
ditions of  married  life,  for  the  despot  —  male  or  female  —  knows 
that  the  victim  must  bear  whatever  has  to  be  borne  without  hope 
of  relief  on  this  side  the  grave  ;  except  when  the  grievance  is  of 
such  a  nature  as  to  come  within  the  reach  of  the  law  ;  a  wide 
enough  margin  to  give  scope  to  sufficiently  serious  cases  of 
tyranny,  as  probably  nobody  would  attempt  to  deny. 

This  tyranny  takes  various  forms  ;  many  of  them  —  and  these 
are  perhaps  the  most  difficult  to  deal  with  —  being  based  upon 
pleas  of  love  and  devotion  ;  a  devotion  which  claimants  have  no 
weak  idea  of  presenting  gratis.  Often  the  tyranny  expresses 
itself  profitably  by  appeals  to  the  pity  and  the  conscience  of  the 
victims  ;  by  threats  of  the  suffering  that  will  ensue  to  the  despot, 
if  his  wishes  are  heartlessly  disregarded.  Should  these  measures 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE       605 

fail,  more  drastic  methods  are  adopted.  There  are  stern  or 
pathetic  reminders  of  indisputable  claims,  accusations  of  selfish- 
ness, of  failing  duty,  and  so  forth.  Between  married  people,  this 
system  is  carried  to  its  extreme,  and  derives  much  of  its  power 
from  the  support  of  popular  sentiment. 

Upon  the  legal  bond  is  founded  every  sort  of  sentimental  tie, 
till  at  last  the  couple  so  bind  and  entwine  themselves  with  multi- 
tudinous restrictions,  that  every  vestige  of  freedom  disappears, 
and  obligation  enters  into  the  very  citadel  of  the  heart.  All  spon- 
taneity must  and  does  evidently  depart,  and  if  feelings  so  bullied 
and  pinioned  show  the  tendency  of  all  prisoners  to  escape,  then 
loud  are  the  wailings  of  the  injured  one,  who  has  succeeded  at 
last  in  worrying  affection  to  death.  The  luxury  of  a  grievance  is 
the  sole  remaining  consolation.  It  seems  strange  that,  with  so 
long  an  experience  behind  them,  human  beings  have  not  yet 
learned  that,  though  they  may  obtain  dominion  by  making  large 
demands,  they  are  likely  to  win  regard  in  inverse  proportion  to 
their  claims  ;  and  that,  in  any  case,  it  is  a  little  absurd  to  set  up 
an  injured  and  fretful  demand  for  affection,  as  if  it  could  be  laid 
on  with  the  gas  and  the  water,  and  kept  going  in  regular  quarterly 
supplies.  Even  when  such  conduct  does  not  destroy  attachment, 
it  does  what  perhaps  is  worse  ;  it  destroys  individuality. 

There  must  be  a  perpetual  surrender  of  tastes  and  opportu- 
nities, in  deference  to  the  affectionate  selfishness  of  the  devoted 
partner,  who  is  unable  to  realize  that  what  may  seem  trivial  to 
him  is  a  matter  of  importance  to  someone  else.  The  husband 
cannot  bear  to  be  parted  from  his  wife  for  a  single  evening ;  there- 
fore unselfishness  dictates  that  the  wife  shall  sacrifice  her  innate 
love  of  —  say  the  drama  (which  he  energetically  loathes),  and 
forego  every  opportunity  of  gratifying  her  taste.  The  adoring 
wife,  on  the  other  hand,  who  hates  to  leave  home,  feels  deserted 
and  miserable  if  her  husband  is  absent  for  more  than  twenty- 
four  hours,  and  she  either  complains  mournfully  when  he  returns, 
recounting  her  sufferings,  or  perhaps,  in  eloquent  silence,  inti- 
mates to  him  that  he  is  a  brute. 

He,  therefore,  feels  it  his  duty  to  curb  his  predilection  for 
travel,  restricting  his  wandering  soul  to  a  dash  down  to  the  sea 


606  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

or  the  river,  sandwiched  between  prologue  and  epilogue  of  apolo- 
gies, except  at  such  times  as  the  martyr's  crown  stirs  his  wife's 
ambition,  and  she  bravely  accompanies  him  on  a  painful  little 
pleasure  excursion. 

Thus  each  one  of  this  estimable  couple  has  to  give  up  what  is 
most  prized,  in  deference  to  the  feelings  of  the  other,  who 
becomes  a  sort  of  amiable  vampire,  draining  the  lifeblood  from 
its  willing  prey. 

This  process  of  mutual  injury  is  carried  on  in  most  marriages 
that  are  called  happy.  In  marriages  that  are  called  unhappy,  one 
of  the  pair  has  ordinarily  proved  recalcitrant,  resisting  the  effacing 
process  which  the  other  sought  to  enforce  —  hinc  illce  lacrimce! 

Perhaps,  on  the  whole,  happy  marriages  of  this  order  are  more 
disastrous  than  unhappy  ones,  for  the  united  pair  finally  succeed, 
at  large  cost  and  trouble,  in  inflicting  upon  one  another  the  great- 
est loss  that  a  human  being  —  as  such  —  can  sustain,  since  he 
misses  his  inheritance  :  his  own  development,  the  peculiar  expe- 
riences that  await  him  in  the  domain  of  his  slumbering  person- 
ality, the  peculiar  contributions  that  humanity  might  have  won 
from  him.  Thus  both  he  and  the  community  are  defrauded, 
since  man  can  possess  and  enjoy  only  so  much  of  the  universe 
of  things  as  he  can  perceive  ;  or  in  other  words,  the  rank  and  the 
nature  of  human  life  are  determined  mathematically  by  the  extent 
and  the  character  of  individual  consciousness.  All  that  tends  to 
narrow  and  stunt  this,  narrows  and  stunts  the  life  of  the  whole 
race,  and  retards  its  growth.  Popular  sentiment  is  busy  at  this 
stunting  process.  Thus  we  find  the  system  almost  reducing  itself 
to  absurdity  in  orthodox  family  life,  wherein  —  speaking  roughly 

—  all  approved  persons  are  conducting  their  existence,  not  accord- 
ing to   their  own   convictions,  but  according   to   those  of   some 
affectionate  relative.     In  short,  every  estimable  person  is  acting 
vicariously  on  the  motives  of  somebody  else. 

We  come  to  the  conclusion,  that  the  present  form  of  marriage 

—  exactly  in  proportion  to  its  conformity  with  orthodox  ideas  — 
is  a  failure.     If  certain  unconscious  heretics,  ignoring  the  teach- 
ings  of  orthodoxy,  have   given   us   inspiring  examples  of  what 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE       607 

marriage  might  be  and  can  be,  such  instances  afford  no  argument 
in  favor  of  the  institution  as  it  is  at  present  interpreted.  Just  to 
the  extent  to  which  a  union  follows  that  popular  interpretation,  is 
it  a  degrading  bondage. 

The  coercive  element  in  marriage,  be  it  observed,  has  been 
introduced  as  a  crude  corrective  to  the  utter  helplessness  to  which 
law-aided  custom  has  reduced  women.  Wives  (as  it  is  even  now 
argued)  would  be  deserted  by  their  husbands  and  left  to  starve, 
unless  the  law  compelled  the  latter  to  remain  with  them.  To 
place  women  in  such  a  position  that  they  need  no  longer  chain 
unwilling  husbands  to  their  side  from  sheer  dread  of  starvation, 
does  not  appear  a  particularly  shocking  proposition,  when  looked 
at  calmly.  When  we  are  assured  that  marriage  is  really  for  the 
protection  of  the  woman,  there  is  indeed  some  truth  in  the  asser- 
tion. She  has  been  brought  to  a  position  which  obliges  the  law 
to  come  to  her  aid,  now  and  then.  Her  capital  (as  so  many  men 
have  nai'vely  pointed  out,  without  the  faintest  suspicion  of  the 
terrible  wrong  implied  by  the  fact)  consists  in  her  youth,  beauty, 
and  attractions.  She  must  invest  it  in  marriage,  and  Society 
offers  a  guarantee  for  the  payment  of  the  interest.  Such  is  the 
protection  that  marriage  offers  to  women  ! 

There  are  many  signs  that  this  arrangement  is  ceasing  to  be 
satisfying  to  either  sex.  They  both  more  or  less  chafe  against 
the  commercial  element,  which  social  conditions  still  prevent  them 
from  either  abolishing  or  ignoring.  An  increasing  number  of 
women  are  refusing  a  life  of  comparative  ease  in  marriage, 
rather  than  enter  upon  it  as  a  means  of  livelihood,  for  which 
their  freedom  has  to  be  sacrificed.  As  this  sentiment  grows  gen- 
eral, men  and  women  cannot  fail  to  recognize,  as  a  mere  truism, 
that  so  long  as  affection  and  friendship  remain  between  a  married 
couple,  no  bonds  are  necessary  to  hold  them  united ;  but  that 
when  these  cease,  the  tie  becomes  intolerable,  and  no  law  ought 
to  have  power  to  enforce  it.  It  need  scarcely  be  added  that  there 
are,  in  these  days,  a  growing  number  who  insist  that  there  must 
be  complete  acknowledgment  of  the  right  of  the  woman  to  pos- 
sess herself,  body  and  soul,  in  absolute  independence.  It  has 


608  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

been  part  and  parcel  of  her  slave's  position  that  this  right  has 
hitherto  been  denied  her,  by  the  sentiment  of  her  contemporaries, 
nay,  until  the  decision  in  the  Jackson  case,  by  force  of  law. 

As  the  monogamic  ideal  becomes  more  and  more  realized  and 
followed,  not  from  force  but  from  conviction,  increasing  freedom 
in  the  form  of  marriage  must  —  paradox  as  it  sounds  —  be  looked 
for  among  a  developing  people.  Greater  respect  for  the  liberties 
of  the  individual  would  alone  dictate  a  system  less  barbaric,  and 
would  secure  it  from  danger  of  abuse.  .  .  . 

There  is,  perhaps,  no  more  difficult  relation  in  the  world  than 
that  of  husband  and  wife.  Peace  is  not  so  very  hard  to  achieve, 
nor  an  apparent  smoothness  that  passes  for  harmony.  The  really 
rare  thing  is  a  unity  which  is  not  purchased  at  the  expense  of 
one  or  other  of  the  partners.  The  old  notion  that  the  man  ought 
to  be  the  commander,  because  one  must  have  a  head  in  every 
commonwealth,  is  a  truly  comic  solution  of  the  difficulty.  To 
preserve  peace  by  disabling  one  of  the  combatants  is  a  method 
that  is  naive  in  its  injustice.  Where,  one  feels  inclined  to  ask, 
again  and  again,  in  considering  this  whole  question,  is  man's 
sense  of  humor?  It  is  this  sort  of  "peace"  in  the  home  which 
brings  with  it  the  sad  disenchantment  that  is  so  fatally  common. 

The  husband's  sense  of  power  over  his  wife  causes  her  to 
become  less  attractive  to  him,  and  it  is  this  loss  of  attraction, 
observed  apart  from  its  cause,  which  creates  so  much  fear  of  the 
effects  of  greater  marital  freedom.  Ardent  upholders  of  the  pres- 
ent status  point  out  that  men  would  leave  their  wives  without 
hesitation  if  they  could,  a  curious  admission  that  most  marriages 
hold  together  by  law  rather  than  by  affection. 

What  could  possibly  be  more  fatal  to  the  wife's  continued  influ- 
ence over  her  husband  than  the  fact  that  she  is  his  absolutely  and 
forever,  quite  irrespective  of  her  wishes  or  of  his  conduct  ?  He 
marries  expecting  exorbitantly.  If  the  wife  does  not  give  him 
all  he  expects,  he  is  disappointed  and  angry  ;  if  she  docs  give  it 
—  well,  it  is  only  her  duty,  and  he  ceases  to  value  it.  It  becomes 
a  matter  of  course,  and  the  romance  and  interest  die  out.  The 
same  thing  in  a  lesser  degree  happens  to  the  wife.  She,  too, 
may  make  vast  claims  upon  her  husband,  curtail  his  liberty  of 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE       609 

action,  and  even  of  thought ;  she  may  drag  him  about  with  her, 
on  the  absurd  assumption  that  it  is  not  "united"  in  husbands 
and  wives  to  have  independent  pursuits  ;  she  may  even  ruin  a 
great  talent,  and  fritter  away  an  otherwise  useful  life,  through 
her  exactions. 

Often,  indeed,  the  claims  on  both  sides  are  willingly  recog- 
nized, but  that  saves  neither  of  the  pair  from  the  narrow  influ- 
ences of  such  a  walled-in  existence.  Marriages  of  this  kind  are 
making  life,  as  a  whole,  airless  and  lacking  in  vitality  ;  social 
intercourse  is  checked,  the  flow  of  thought  is  retarded  ;  and  these 
unions  have  also  the  very  evil  effect  of  cutting  off,  in  a  great 
measure,  both  the  husband  and  wife  from  friendly  relations  with 
others.  The  complaint  among  friends  is  universal :  when  a  man 
or  woman  marries  a  great  curtain  seems  to  fall.  As  human  beings 
they  have  both  lost  their  position  ;  they  are  more  or  less  shut 
away  in  their  little  circle,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  world  is  em- 
phatically outside.  As  society  is  made  up,  to  a  large  extent,  of 
married  couples  —  all  tending  to  this  self-satisfied  isolation  amidst 
undisturbed  family  prejudice  —  it  suffers  from  a  sort  of  coagulat- 
ing process,  whose  effects  we  are  all  feeling  in  a  thousand  unsus- 
pected ways.  Life  is  tied  up  into  myriads  of  tight  little  knots, 
and  the  blood  cannot  flow  through  the  body  politic.  Ordinary 
social  intercourse  does  little  or  nothing  to  loosen  this  stricture. 
The  marital  relationship  of  claims  and  restraints  is,  perhaps,  in  its 
vaunted  "success,"  more  melancholy  than  in  its  admitted  failure. 

61.  MARRIAGE  NOT  A  CONTRACT1 

We  have  seen  that  when  the  Catholic  development  of  the 
archaic  conception  of  marriage  as  a  sacrament,  slowly  elaborated 
and  fossilized  by  the  ingenuity  of  the  Canonists,  was  at  last  nom- 
inally dethroned,  though  not  destroyed,  by  the  movement  asso- 
ciated with  the  Reformation,  it  was  replaced  by  the  conception 
of  marriage  as  a  contract.  This  conception  of  marriage  as  a 
contract  still  enjoys  a  considerable  amount  of  credit  amongst  us. 

1  By  Havelock  Ellis.  Adapted  from  Sex  in  Relation  to  Society,  pp.  470-486, 
503-505.  F.  A.  Davis  Co.,  Philadelphia,  1913. 


610  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

There  must  always  be  contractive  elements,  implicit  or 
explicit,  in  a  marriage  ;  that  was  well  recognized  even  by  the 
Canonists.  But  when  we  treat  marriage  as  all  contract,  and 
nothing  but  contract,  we  have  to  realize  that  we  have  set  up  a 
very  peculiar  form  of  contract,  not  voidable,  like  other  contracts, 
by  the  agreement  of  the  parties  to  it,  but  dissoluble  as  a  sort  of 
punishment  of  delinquency  rather  than  by  the  voluntary  annul- 
ment of  a  bond.1  When  the  Protestant  Reformers  seized  on  the 
idea  of  marriage  as  a  contract  they  were  not  influenced  by 
any  reasoned  analysis  of  the  special  characteristics  of  a  contract ; 
they  were  merely  anxious  to  secure  a  plausible  ground,  already 
admitted  even  by  the  Canonists  to  cover  certain  aspects  of  the 
matrimonial  union,  on  which  they  could  declare  that  marriage  is 
a  secular  and  not  an  ecclesiastical  matter,  a  civil  bond  and  not 
a  sacramental  process.2 

Like  so  much  else  in  the  Protestant  revolt,  the  strength  of  this 
attitude  lay  in  the  fact  that  it  was  a  protest,  based  on  its  negative 
side  on  reasonable  and  natural  grounds.  But  while  Protestantism 
was  right  in  its  attempt  —  for  it  was  only  an  attempt  —  to  deny 
the  authority  of  Canon  law,  that  attempt  was  altogether  unsatis- 
factory on  the  positive  side.  As  a  matter  of  fact  marriage  is  not 
a  true  contract  and  no  attempt  has  ever  been  made  to  convert  it 
into  a  true  contract. 

If  marriage  were  really  placed  on  the  basis  of  a  contract,  not 
only  would  that  contract  be  voidable  at  the  will  of  the  two  parties 
concerned,  without  any  question  of  delinquency  coming  into  the 
question,  but  those  parties  would  at  the  outset  themselves  deter- 
mine the  conditions  regulating  the  contract.  But  nothing  could 
be  more  unlike  our  actual  marriage.  The  two  parties  are  bidden 
to  accept  each  other  as  husband  and  wife ;  they  are  not  invited  to 
make  a  contract ;  they  are  not  even  told  that,  little  as  they  may 

1  Hobhouse,  Morals  in  Evolution,  Vol.  I,  p.  237. 

2  The  same  conception  of  marriage  as  a  contract  still  persists  to  some  extent 
also  in  the   United   States,  whither  it  was  carried  by  the  early  Protestants  and 
Puritans.    No  definition  of  marriage  is  indeed  usually  laid  down  by  the  States, 
but,  Howard  says  (History  of  Matrimonial  Institutions,  Vol.  II,  p.  395),  "  in  effect 
matrimony  is  treated  as  a  relation  partaking  of  the  nature  of  both  status  and 
contract." 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE       611 

know  it,  they  have  in  fact  made  a  very  complicated  and  elaborate 
contract  that  was  framed  on  lines  laid  down,  for  a  large  part, 
thousands  of  years  before  they  were  born.  Unless  they  have 
studied  law  they  are  totally  ignorant,  also,  that  this  contract  con- 
tains clauses  which  under  some  circumstances  may  be  fatal  to 
either  of  them.  All  that  happens  is  that  a  young  couple,  perhaps 
little  more  than  children,  momentarily  dazed  by  emotion,  are 
hurried  before  the  clergyman  or  the  civil  registrar  of  marriages, 
to  bind  themselves  together  for  life,  knowing  nothing  of  the 
world  and  scarcely  more  of  each  other,  knowing  nothing  also  of 
the  marriage  laws,  not  even  perhaps  so  much  as  that  there  are 
any  marriage  laws,  never  realizing  that  —  as  has  been  truly  said 
—  from  the  place  they  are  entering  beneath  a  garland  of  flowers 
there  is,  on  this  side  of  death,  no  exit  except  through  the  trap- 
door of  a  sewer.1 

Marriage  is,  therefore,  not  only  not  a  contract  in  the  true 
sense,2  but  in  the  only  sense  in  which  it  is  a  contract  it  is  a 
contract  of  an  exceedingly  bad  kind.  When  the  Canonists  super- 
seded the  old  conception  of  marriage  as  a  contract  of  purchase 
by  their  sacramental  marriage,  they  were  in  many  respects  effect- 
ing a  real  progress,  and  the  return  to  the  idea  of  a  contract,  as 
soon  as  its  temporary  value  as  a  protest  has  ceased,  proves  alto- 
gether out  of  harmony  with  any  advanced  stage  of  civilization. 
It  was  revived  in  days  before  the  revolt  against  slavery  had 
been  inaugurated.  Personal  contracts  are  out  of  harmony  with 
our  modern  civilization  and  our  ideas  of  individual  liberty.  A 
man  can  no  longer  contract  himself  as  a  slave  nor  sell  his  wife. 
Yet  marriage,  regarded  as  a  contract,  is  of  precisely  the  same 
class  as  those  transactions.3  In  every  high  state  of  civilization 

1  This    point   of   view   has   been  vigorously    set   forth   by    Paul   and    Victor 
Margueritte,  Quelques  Idees. 

2  I  may  remark  that  this  was  pointed  out,  and  its  consequences  vigorously 
argued,  many  years  ago  by  C.  G.  Garrison,  "  Limits  of  Divorce,"  Contemporary 
Revinv,  February,  1894.    "It  may  safely  be  asserted,"  he  concludes,  "that  mar- 
riage presents   not   one   attribute  or  incident  of  anything  remotely  resembling 
a  contract,  either  in  form,  remedy,  procedure,  or  result;   but  that  in  all  these 
aspects,  on  the  contrary,  it  is  fatally  hostile  to  the  principles  and  practices  of  that 
division  of  the  rights  of  persons."    Marriage  is  not  contract,  but  conduct. 

8  See,  e.g.,  P.  and  V.  Margueritte,  op.cit. 


612  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

this  fact  is  clearly  recognized,  and  young  couples  are  not  even 
allowed  to  contract  themselves  out  in  marriage  unconditionally. 
We  see  this,  for  instance,  in  the  wise  legislation  of  the  Romans. 
Even  under  the  Christian  Emperors  that  sound  principle  was 
maintained  and  the  lawyer  Paulus  wrote:1  "Marriage  was  so 
free,  according  to  ancient  opinion,  that  even  agreements  between 
the  parties  not  to  separate  from  one  another  could  have  no 
validity."  In  so  far  as  the  essence  and  not  any  accidental  cir- 
cumstance of  the  marital  relationships  is  made  a  contract,  it  is  a 
contract  of  a  nature  which  the  two  parties  concerned  are  not 
competent  to  make.  Biologically  and  psychologically  it  cannot 
be  valid,  and  with  the  growth  of  a  humane  civilization  it  is 
explicitly  declared  to  be  legally  invalid. 

For,  there  can  be  no  doubt  about  it,  the  intimate  and  essential 
fact  of  marriage  —  the  relationship  of  sexual  intercourse  —  is 
not  and  cannot  be  a  contract.  It  is  not  a  contract  but  a  fact ;  it 
cannot  be  effected  by  any  mere  act  of  will  on  the  part  of  the 
parties  concerned  ;  it  cannot  be  maintained  by  any  mere  act  of 
will.  To  will  such  a  contract  is  merely  to  perform  a  worse  than 
indecorous  farce.  Certainly  many  of  the  circumstances  of  mar- 
riage are  properly  the  subject  of  contract,  to  be  voluntarily  and 
deliberately  made  by  the  parties  to  the  contract.  But  the  essen- 
tial fact  of  marriage  —  a  love  strong  enough  to  render  the  most 
intimate  of  relationships  possible  and  desirable  through  an  in- 
definite number  of  years  —  cannot  be  made  a  matter  for  contract. 
Alike  from  the  physical  point  of  view,  and  the  psychical  point 
of  view,  no  binding  contract  —  and  a  contract  is  worthless  if  it  is 
not  binding  —  can  possibly  be  made.  And  the  making  of  such 
pseudo-contracts  concerning  the  future  of  a  marriage,  before  it 
has  even  been  ascertained  that  the  marriage  can  ever  become  a 
fact  at  all,  is  not  only  impossible  but  absurd. 

It  is  of  course  true  that  this  impossibility,  this  absurdity,  is 
never  visible  to  the  contracting  parties.  They  have  applied  to 
the  question  all  the  very  restricted  tests  that  are  conventionally 
permitted  to  them,  and  the  satisfactory  results  of  these  tests, 
together  with  the  consciousness  of  possessing  an  immense  and 

1  As  quoted  by  Howard,  cp.  cit.,  Vol.  II,  p.  29. 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE        613 

apparently  inexhaustible  fund  of  loving  emotion,  seem  to  them 
adequate  to  the  fulfillment  of  the  contract  throughout  life,  if  not 
indeed  eternity. 

As  a  child  of  seven  I  chanced  to  be  in  a  semitropical  island 
of  the  Pacific  supplied  with  fruit,  especially  grapes,  from  the 
mainland,  and  a  dusky  market  woman  always  presented  a  large 
bunch  of  grapes  to  the  little  English  stranger.  But  a  day  came 
when  the  proffered  bunch  was  firmly  refused  ;  the  superabundance 
of  grapes  had  produced  a  reaction  of  disgust.  A  space  of  nearly 
forty  years  was  needed  to  overcome  the  repugnance  to  grapes 
thus  acquired.  Yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  if  at  the  age  of 
six  that  little  boy  had  been  asked  to  sign  a  contract  binding  him 
to  accept  grapes  every  day,  to  keep  them  always  near  him,  to  eat 
them  and  to  enjoy  them  every  day,  he  would  have  signed  that 
contract  as  joyously  as  any  radiant  bridegroom  or  demure  bride 
signs  the  register  in  the  vestry.  But  is  a  complex  man  or  woman, 
with  unknown  capacities  for  changing  or  deteriorating,  and  with 
incalculable  aptitudes  for  inflicting  torture  and  arousing  loathing, 
is  such  a  creature  more  easy  to  be  bound  to  than  an  exquisite 
fruit  ?  All  the  countries  of  the  world  in  which  the  subtle  influ- 
ence of  the  Canon  law  of  Christendom  still  makes  itself  felt, 
have  not  yet  grasped  a  general  truth  which  is  well  within  the 
practical  experience  of  a  child  of  seven.1 

It  thus  tends  to  come  about  that  with  the  growth  of  civilization 
the  conception  of  marriage  as  a  contract  falls  more  and  more 
into  discredit.  It  is  realized,  on  the  one  hand,  that  personal  con- 
tracts are  out  of  harmony  with  our  general  and  social  attitude, 
for  if  we  reject  the  idea  of  a  human  being  contracting  himself 
as  a  slave,  how  much  more  we  should  reject  the  idea  of  entering 
by  contract  into  the  still  more  intimate  relationship  of  a  husband 
or  a  wife  ;  on  the  other  hand  it  is  felt  that  the  idea  of  pre- 
ordained contracts  on  a  matter  over  which  the  individual  himself 
has  no  control  is  quite  unreal  and  when  any  strict  rules  of  equity 

1  Ellen  Key  similarly  (Ueber  Liebe  und  Ehe,  p.  343)  remarks  that  to  talk  of 
"the  duty  of  life-long  fidelity  "  is  much  the  same  as  to  talk  of  "  the  duty  of  life- 
long health."  A  man  may  promise,  she  adds,  to  do  his  best  to  preserve  his  life, 
or  his  love  ;  he  cannot  unconditionally  undertake  to  preserve  them. 


6l4  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

prevail,  necessarily  invalid.  It  is  true  that  we  still  constantly  find 
writers  sententiously  asserting  their  notions  of  the  duties  or  the 
privileges  involved  by  the  "contract"  of  marriage,  with  no  more 
attempt  to  analyze  the  meaning  of  the  term  "contract"  in  this 
connection  than  the  Protestant  Reformers  made,  but  it  can 
scarcely  be  said  that  these  writers  have  yet  reached  the  alphabet 
of  the  subject  they  dogmatize  about. 

The  transference  of  marriage  from  the  Church  to  the  State 
which,  in  the  lands  where  it  first  occurred,  we  owe  to  Protestant- 
ism and,  in  the  English-speaking  lands,  especially  to  Puritanism, 
while  a  necessary  stage,  had  the  unfortunate  result  of  secularizing 
the  sexual  relationships.  That  is  to  say,  it  ignored  the  transcend- 
ent element  in  love,  which  is  really  the  essential  part  of  such 
relationships,  and  it  concentrated  attention  on  those  formal  and 
accidental  parts  of  marriage  which  can  alone  be  dealt  with  in  a 
rigid  and  precise  manner,  and  can  alone  properly  form  the  sub- 
ject of  contracts.  The  Canon  law,  fantastic  and  impossible  as  it 
became  in  many  of  its  developments,  at  least  insisted  on  the 
natural  and  actual  fact  of  marriage  as,  above  all,  a  bodily  union, 
while,  at  the  same  time,  it  regarded  that  union  as  no  mere  secular 
business  contract  but  a  sacred  and  exalted  function,  a  divine  fact, 
and  the  symbol  of  the  most  divine  fact  in  the  world.  We  are 
returning  to-day  to  the  Canonist's  conception  of  marriage  on  a 
higher  and  freer  plane,  bringing  back  the  exalted  conception  of 
the  Canon  law,  yet  retaining  the  individualism  which  the  Puritan 
wrongly  thought  he  could  secure  on  the  basis  of  mere  seculariza- 
tion, while,  further,  we  recognize  that  the  whole  process  belongs  to 
the  private  sphere  of  moral  responsibility.  As  Hobhouse  has  well 
said,  in  tracing  the  evolutionary  history  of  the  modern  conception 
of  marriage,  the  sacramental  idea  of  marriage  has  again  emerged 
but  on  a  higher  plane  ;  "from  being  a  sacrament  in  the  magical,  it 
has  become  one  in  the  ethical,  sense."  We  are  thus  tending  towards, 
though  we  have  not  yet  legally  achieved,  marriage  made  and  main- 
tained by  consent,  "  a  union  between  two  free  and  responsible  per- 
sons in  which  the  equal  rights  of  both  are  maintained."1 

1  Ilobhouse,  of.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  159,  237-239;  cf.  P.  and  V.  Margueritte, 
Ouelques  Idees. 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE       615 

If  from  the  point  we  have  now  reached  we  look  back  at  the 
question  of  divorce  we  see  that,  as  the  modern  aspects  of  the 
marriage  relationship  become  more  clearly  realized  by  the  com- 
munity, that  question  will  be  immensely  simplified.  Since  mar- 
riage is  not  a  mere  contract  but  a  fact  of  conduct,  and  even  a 
sacred  fact,  the  free  participation  of  both  parties  is  needed  to 
maintain  it.  To  introduce  the  idea  of  delinquency  and  punish- 
ment into  divorce,  to  foster  mutual  recrimination,  to  publish  to 
the  world  the  secrets  of  the  heart  or  the  senses,  is  not  only 
immoral,  it  is  altogether  out  of  place.  In  the  question  as  to  when 
a  marriage  has  ceased  to  be  a  marriage  the  two  parties  concerned 
can  alone  be  the  supreme  judges ;  the  State,  if  the  State  is  called  in, 
can  but  register  the  sentence  they  pronounce,  merely  seeing  to  it 
that  no  injustice  is  involved  in  the  carrying  out  of  that  sentence.1 

In  discussing  in  the  previous  chapter2  the  direction  in  which 
sexual  morality  tends  to  develop  with  the  development  of  civiliza- 
tion we  came  to  the  conclusion  that  in  its  main  lines  it  involved, 
above  all,  personal  responsibility.  A  relationship  fixed  among 
savage  peoples  by  social  custom  which  none  dare  break,  and  in  a 
higher  stage  of  culture  by  formal  laws  which  must  be  observed 
in  the  letter  even  if  broken  in  the  spirit,  becomes  gradually  trans- 
ferred to  the  sphere  of  individual  moral  responsibility.  Such  a 
transference  is  necessarily  meaningless,  and  indeed  impossible, 
unless  the  increasing  stringency  of  the  moral  bond  is  accompanied 
by  the  decreasing  stringency  of  the  formal  bond.  It  is  only  by 
the  process  of  loosening  the  artificial  restraints  that  the  natural 
restraints  can  exert  their  full  control.  That  process  takes  place 
in  two  ways,  in  part  on  the  basis  of  the  indifference  to  formal 
marriage  which  has  marked  the  masses  of  the  population  every- 
where and  doubtless  stretches  back  to  the  tenth  century  before 
the  domination  of  ecclesiastical  matrimony  began,  and  partly  by 
the  progressive  modification  of  marriage  laws  which  were  made 
necessary  by  the  needs  of  the  propertied  classes  anxious  to  secure 

1  "  Divorce,"  as  Garrison  puts  it  ("  Limits  of  Divorce,"  Contemporary  Revinv, 
February,  1894),  "is  the  judicial  announcement  that  conduct  once  connubial  in 

character  and  purpose,  has  lost  these  qualities Divorce  is  a  question  of 

fact,  and  not  a  license  to  break  a  promise." 

2  See  Sex  in  Relation  to  Society,  chap.  ix. 


616  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  State  recognition  of  their  unions.  The  whole  process  is 
necessarily  a  gradual  and  indeed  imperceptible  process.  It  is 
impossible  to  fix  definitely  the  dates  of  the  stages  by  which  the 
Church  effected  the  immense  revolution  by  which  it  grasped,  and 
eventually  transferred  to  the  State,  the  complete  control  of  mar- 
riage, for  that  revolution  was  effected  without  the  intervention  of 
any  law.  It  will  be  equally  difficult  to  perceive  the  transference 
of  the  control  of  marriage  from  the  State  to  the  individuals  con- 
cerned, and  the  more  difficult  because,  as  we  shall  see,  although 
the  essential  and  intimately  personal  fact  of  marriage  is  not  a 
proper  matter  for  State  control,  there  are  certain  aspects  of  mar- 
riage which  touch  the  interests  of  the  community  so  closely  that 
the  State .  is  bound  to  insist  on  their  registration  and  to  take  an 
interest  in  their  settlement. 

The  result  of  dissolving  the  formal  stringency  of  the  marriage 
relationship,  it  is  sometimes  said,  would  be  a  tendency  to  an 
immoral  laxity.  Those  who  make  this  statement  overlook  the 
fact  that  laxity  tends  to  reach  a  maximum  as  a  result  of  strin- 
gency, and  that  where  the  merely  external  authority  of  a  rigid 
marriage  law  prevails,  there  the  extreme  excesses  of  license  most 
flourish.  It  is  also  undoubtedly  true,  and  for  the  same  reason, 
that  any  sudden  removal  of  restraints  necessarily  involves  a  reac- 
tion to  the  opposite  extreme  of  license  ;  a  slave  is  not  changed 
at  a  stroke  into  an  autonomous  freeman.  Yet  we  have  to  remem- 
ber that  the  marriage  order  existed  for  millenniums  before  any 
attempt  was  made  to  mold  it  into  arbitrary  shapes  by  human 
legislation.  Such  legislation,  we  have  seen,  was  indeed  the  effort 
of  the  human  spirit  to  affirm  more  emphatically  the  demands  of 
its  own  instincts.  But  its  final  result  is  to  choke  and  impede 
rather  than  to  further  the  instincts  which  inspired  it.  Its  gradual 
disappearance  allows  the  natural  order  free  and  proper  scope. 

When  the  loss  of  autonomous  freedom  fails  to  lead  to  licen- 
tious rebellion  it  incurs  the  opposite  risk  and  tends  to  become  a 
flabby  reliance  on  an  external  support.  The  artificial  support  of 
marriage  by  State  regulation  then  resembles  the  artificial  support 
of  the  body  furnished  by  corset-wearing.  The  reasons  for  and 
against  adopting  artificial  support  are  the  same  in  one  case  as 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE        617 

the  other.  Corsets  really  give  a  feeling  of  support;  they  really 
furnish  without  trouble  a  fairly  satisfactory  appearance  of  de- 
corum ;  they  are  a  real  protection  against  various  accidents.  But 
the  price  at  which  they  furnish  these  advantages  is  serious,  and 
the  advantages  themselves  only  exist  under  unnatural  conditions. 
The  corset  cramps  the  form  and  the  healthy  development  of  the 
organs ;  it  enfeebles  the  voluntary  muscular  system  ;  it  is  in- 
compatible with  perfect  grace  and  beauty ;  it  diminishes  the  sum 
of  active  energy.  It  exerts,  in  short,  the  same  kind  of  influ- 
ence on  physical  responsibility  as  formal  marriage  on  moral 
responsibility. 

It  is  certainly  inevitable  that  during  a  period  of  transition  the 
natural  order  is  to  some  extent  disturbed  by  the  persistence,  even 
though  in  a  weakened  form,  of  external  bonds  which  are  begin- 
ning to  be  consciously  realized  as  inimical  to  the  authoritative 
control  of  individual  moral  responsibility.  We  can  clearly  trace 
this  at  the  present  time.  A  sensitive  anxiety  to  escape  from  ex- 
ternal constraint  induces  an  undervaluation  of  the  significance 
of  personal  constraint  in  the  relationship  of  marriage.  Everyone 
is  probably  familiar  with  cases  in  which  a  couple  will  live  together 
through  long  years  without  entering  the  legal  bond  of  marriage, 
notwithstanding  difficulties  in  their  mutual  relationship  which 
would  have  long  since  caused  a  separation  or  a  divorce  had  they 
been  legally  married.  When  the  inherent  difficulties  of  the  mar- 
ital relationship  are  complicated  by  the  difficulties  due  to  external 
constraint,  the  development  of  individual  moral  responsibility  cuts 
two  ways,  and  leads  to  results  that  are  not  entirely  satisfactory. 
This  has  been  seen  in  the  United  States  of  America  and  atten- 
tion has  often  been  called  to  it  by  thoughtful  American  observers. 
It  is,  naturally,  noted  especially  in  women  because  it  is  in  women 
that  the  new  growth  of  personal  freedom  and  moral  responsibility 
has  chiefly  made  itself  felt.  The  first  stirring  of  these  new  im- 
pulses, especially  when  associated,  as  it  often  is,  with  inexperience 
and  ignorance,  leads  to  impatience  with  the  natural  order,  to  a 
demand  for  impossible  conditions  of  existence,  and  to  an  inapti- 
tude not  only  for  the  arbitrary  bondage  of  law  but  even  for  the 
wholesome  and  necessary  bonds  of  human  social  life.  It  is  always 


6i8  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

a  hard  lesson  for  the  young  and  idealistic  that  in  order  to  com- 
mand Nature  we  must  obey  her ;  it  can  only  be  learned  through 
contact  with  life  and  by  the  attainment  of  full  human  growth. 

We  have  seen  that  the  modern  tendency  as  regards  marriage 
is  towards  its  recognition  as  a  voluntary  union  entered  into  by 
two  free,  equal,  -and  morally  responsible  persons,  and  that  that 
union  is  rather  of  the  nature  of  an  ethical  sacrament  than  of  a 
contract,  so  that  in  its  essence  as  a  physical  and  spiritual  bond 
it  is  outside  the  sphere  of  the  State's  action.  It  has  been  neces- 
sary to  labor  that  point  before  we  approach  what  may  seem  to 
many  not  only  a  different  but  even  a  totally  opposed  aspect  of 
marriage.  If  the  marriage  union  itself  cannot  be  a  matter  for 
contract,  it  naturally  leads  to  a  fact  which  must  necessarily  be 
a  matter  for  implicit  or  explicit  contract,  a  matter,  moreover,  in 
which  the  community  at  large  has  a  real  and  proper  interest : 
that  is  the  fact  of  procreation.  .  .  . 

If  —  to  sum  up  —  we  consider  the  course  which  the  regulation 
of  marriage  has  run  during  the  Christian  era,  the  only  period 
which  immediately  concerns  us,  it  is  not  difficult  to  trace  the 
main  outlines.  Marriage  began  as  a  private  arrangement,  which 
the  Church,  without  being  able  to  control,  was  willing  to  bless, 
as  it  also  blessed  many  other  secular  affairs  of  men,  making  no 
undue  attempt  to  limit  its  natural  flexibility  to  human  needs. 
Gradually  and  imperceptibly,  however,  without  the  medium  of 
any  law,  Christianity  gained  the  complete  control  of  marriage, 
coordinated  it  with  its  already  evolved  conceptions  of  the  evil  of 
lust,  of  the  virtue  of  chastity,  of  the  mortal  sin  of  fornication, 
and,  having  through  the  influence  of  these  dominating  concep- 
tions limited  the  flexibility  of  marriage  in  every  possible  direc- 
tion, it  placed  it  on  a  lofty  but  narrow  pedestal  as  the  sacrament 
of  matrimony.  For  reasons  which  by  no  means  lay  in  the  nature 
of  the  sexual  relationships,  but  which  probably  seemed  cogent  to 
sacerdotal  legislators  who  assimilated  it  to  ordination,  matrimony 
was  declared  indissoluble.  Nothing  was  so  easy  to  enter  as  the 
gate  of  matrimony,  but,  after  the  manner  of  a  mousetrap,  it 
opened  inwards  and  not  outwards  ;  once  in  there  was  no  way 
out  alive.  The  Church's  regulation  of  marriage  while,  like  the 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  ETHICS  OF  DIVORCE       619 

celibacy  of  the  clergy,  it  was  a  success  from  the  point  of  view  of 
ecclesiastical  politics,  and  even  at  first  from  the  point  of  view 
of  civilization,  for  it  at  least  introduced  order  into  a  chaotic  society, 
was  in  the  long  run  a  failure  from  the  point  of  view  of  society 
and  morals.  On  the  one  hand  it  drifted  into  absurd  subtleties 
and  quibbles ;  on  the  other,  not  being  based  on  either  reason  or 
humanity,  it  had  none  of  that  vital  adaptability  to  the  needs  of 
life,  which  early  Christianity,  while  holding  aloft  austere  ideals, 
still  largely  retained.  On  the  side  of  tradition  this  code  of  mar- 
riage law  became  awkward  and  impracticable ;  on  the  biological 
side  it  was  hopelessly  false.  The  way  was  thus  prepared  for  the 
Protestant  reintroduction  of  the  conception  of  marriage  as  a  con- 
tract, that  conception  being,  however,  brought  forward  less  on  its 
merits  than  as  a  protest  against  the  difficulties  and  absurdities 
of  the  Catholic  Canon  law.  The  contractive  view,  which  still 
largely  persists  even  to-day,  speedily  took  over  much  of  the  Canon 
law  doctrines  of  marriage,  becoming  in  practice  a  kind  of  re- 
formed and  secularized  Canon  law.  It  was  somewhat  more 
adapted  to  modern  needs,  but  it  retained  much  of  the  rigidity 
of  the  Catholic  marriage  without  its  sacramental  character,  and  it 
never  made  any  attempt  to  become  more  than  nominally  contrac- 
tive. It  has  been  of  the  nature  of  an  incongruous  compromise 
and  has  represented  a  transitional  phase  towards  free  private 
marriage.  We  can  recognize  that  phase  in  the  tendency,  well 
marked  in  all  civilized  lands,  to  an  ever-increasing  flexibility  of 
marriage.  The  idea,  and  even  the  fact,  of  marriage  by  consent 
and  divorce  by  failure  of  that  consent,  which  we  are  now  ap- 
proaching, has  never  indeed  been  quite  extinct.  In  the  Latin 
countries  it  has  survived  with  the  tradition  of  Roman  law ;  in  the 
English-speaking  countries  it  is  bound  up  with  the  spirit  of 
Puritanism  which  insists  that  in  the  things  that  concern  the 
individual  alone  the  individual  himself  shall  be  the  supreme 
judge.  That  doctrine  as  applied  to  marriage  was  in  England 
magnificently  asserted  by  the  genius  of  Milton,  and  in  America 
it  has  been  a  leaven  which  is  still  working  in  marriage  legislation 
towards  an  inevitable  goal  which  is  scarcely  yet  in  sight.  The 
marriage  system  of  the  future,  as  it  moves  along  its  present  course, 


620  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

will  resemble  the  old  Christian  system  in  that  it  will  recognize 
the  sacred  and  sacramental  character  of  the  sexual  relationship, 
and  it  will  resemble  the  civil  conception  in  that  it  will  insist  that 
marriage,  so  far  as  it  involves  procreation,  shall  be  publicly 
registered  by  the  State.  But  in  opposition  to  the  Church  it  will 
recognize  that  marriage,  in  so  far  as  it  is  purely  a  sexual  relation- 
ship, is  a  private  matter  the  conditions  of  which  must  be  left  to 
the  persons  who  alone  are  concerned  in  it ;  and  in  opposition 
to  the  civil  theory  it  will  recognize  that  marriage  is  in  its  essence 
a  fact  and  not  a  contract,  though  it  may  give  rise  to  contracts, 
so  long  as  such  contracts  do  not  touch  that  essential  fact.  And 
in  one  respect  it  will  go  beyond  either  the  ecclesiastical  concep- 
tion or  the  civil  conception.  Man  has  in  recent  times  gained 
control  of  his  own  procreative  powers,  and  that  control  involves 
a  shifting  of  the  center  of  gravity  of  marriage,  in  so  far  as  mar- 
riage is  an  affair  of  the  State,  from  the  vagina  to  the  child  which 
is  the  fruit  of  the  womb.  Marriage  as  a  state  institution  will 
center,  not  around  the  sexual  relationship,  but  around  the  child 
which  is  the  outcome  of  that  relationship.  In  so  far  as  marriage 
is  an  inviolable  public  contract  it  will  be  of  such  a  nature  that 
it  will  be  capable  of  automatically  covering  with  its  protection 
every  child  that  is  born  into  the  world,  so  that  every  child  may 
possess  a  legal  mother  and  a  legal  father.  On  the  one  side,  there- 
fore, marriage  is  tending  to  become  less  stringent ;  on  the  other 
side  it  is  tending  to  become  more  stringent.  On  the  personal 
side  it  is  a  sacred  and  intimate  relationship  with  which  the  State 
has  no  concern  ;  on  the  social  side  it  is  the  assumption  of  the 
responsible  public  sponsorship  of  a  new  member  of  the  State. 
Some  among  us  are  working  to  further  one  of  these  aspects  of 
marriage,  some  to  further  the  other  aspect.  Both  are  indis- 
pensable to  establish  a  perfect  harmony.  It  is  necessary  to  hold 
the  two  aspects  of  marriage  apart,  in  order  to  do  equal  justice  to 
the  individual  and  to  society,  but  in  so  far  as  marriage  approaches 
its  ideal  state  those  two  aspects  become  one. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT 

The  fundamental  causes  of  divorce,  62 1 .  —  Economic  development,  628.  —  Stand- 
ards of  living,  628.  —  Pressure  of  economic  life  upon  the  home,  629.  —  Passing  of 
the  economic  function  of  the  family,  631.  —  Economic  emancipation  of  women, 
633. —  Social  progress,  636. —  Liberalism,  637.  —  Popularization  of  law,  639. — 
Education,  640.  —  Ethical  and  religious  readjustment,  643.  —  Single  moral  stand- 
ard, 647.  —  Higher  ideals  of  domestic  happiness,  647.  —  Minority  Report  of  the 
Royal  Commission  on  Divorce  — need  of  principles  in  divorce  reform,  649. — 
National  Congress  on  Uniform  Divorce  Laws  —  proposed  uniform  divorce  law 
for  the  United  States,  657. 

62.    THE  REAL  CAUSES  OF  DIVORCE1 

CAUSES  OF  INCREASE 
Persistence  of  the  Increase 

The  forces  tending  to  counteract  divorce  are  among  the  most 
efficient  elements  of  social  control.  Laws  have  been  enacted  in 
every  State  in  the  Union  for  the  purpose  of  regulating  divorces, 
ranging  in  strictness  from  the  recognition  of  fourteen  valid 
grounds  in  New  Hampshire,  to  absolute  prohibition  in  South 
Carolina.  While  the  laws  in  the  several  states  differ  in  respect 
to  the  causes  for  divorce,  they  agree  in  their  restrictive  purpose. 
Juristic  interpretation  has  required  a  more  strict  conformity  to 
the  law.  Ecclesiastical  divorce  legislation  in  the  great  Protestant 
bodies,  a  product  of  the  period  we  are  studying,  has  increased 
in  stringency  with  the  rise  of  the  divorce  rate.  The  persistent 
protest  of  the  Protestant  clergy,  even  where  no  ecclesiastical 
enactment  requires  it,  is  expressed  in  their  refusal,  in  most 

1  By  James  P.  Lichtenberger.  Adapted  from  "  Divorce,  a  Study  in  Social 
Causation."  Columbia  University  Studies  in  History,  Economics,  and  Public  Law, 
Vol.  XXXV,  No.  3  (1909),  pp.  142-150,  157-171,  176-189,  192-199. 

621 


622  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

instances  to  marry  divorced  persons  unless  it  should  be  the  inno- 
cent party  to  a  decree  obtained  on  "  scriptural  grounds."  The 
doctrine  of  indissolubility  still  holds  in  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church.  Public  opinion  expresses  its  disapproval  chiefly  through 
the  press  and  by  means  of  voluntary  associations  for  the  sup- 
pression of  the  "  divorce  evil." 

A  situation  of  a  most  interesting  nature  now  confronts  us. 
Despite  all  these  counter  influences  the  rise  of  the  divorce  rate 
is  persistent  and  rapid.  This  fact,  it  would  seem,  is  equivalent 
to  a  demonstration  that  the  family,  like  every  other  social  insti- 
tution, is  subject  to  forces  resident  within  society  which  do  not 
depend  for  their  operation  upon  human  laws  and  are  not  subject 
to  control  by  artificial  means  or  external  authority,  but  which 
operate  by  a  law  of  their  own  nature  and  compel  the  readjust- 
ment of  ideals  in  harmony  with  their  own  development. 

This  is  apparent  in  the  fact  that  divorce  is  the  result  and  not 
the  cause  of  the  break-up  of  the  family.  In  an  increasing  num- 
ber of  instances  marital  relations  have  ceased  to  exist  between 
persons  legally  united.  Mutual  affection  and  free  choice,  essen- 
tial elements  of  valid  marriage,  are  absent.  Every  tie  upon  which 
the  law,  ecclesiastical  and  civil,  placed  its  sanction  is  severed. 
The  husband  and  wife  are  estranged.  This  often  leads  to  sepa- 
ration. If  there  are  children  they  go  to  live,  as  a  rule,  either 
with  one  of  the  parents  or  with  some  other  relative.  Only  occa- 
sionally do  they  become  wards  of  the  state.  The  family  in  these 
cases  has  no  longer  any  actual,  but  only  a  legal,  existence. 

Wherever  this  condition  has  prevailed  the  parties  have  sought 
release  from  the  only  remaining  bond,  the  legal  one,  and  they 
employ  whatever  means  the  law  itself  has  made  necessary  to  that 
end.  Divorce  is  therefore  the  legal  act  by  which  the  legal  bond 
is  dissolved,  when  every  other  reason  for  the  continuance  of  the 
marriage  relation  has  disappeared. 

From  this  point  of  view  it  is  clear  that  the  study  of  divorce 
statistics  can  only  be  of  service  in  indicating  imperfectly  the 
degree  of  disaffection  in  the  family  life.  Legal  divorce  can  never 
be  more  than  an  approximate  index  to  the  actual  divorce  in  a 
population.  The  more  stringent  the  law  the  less  likely  are  the 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  623 

figures  to  conform  to  the  actual  number  of  estrangements  and 
separations,  or  to  indicate  the  degree  of  unfaithfulness  to  the 
marriage  bond. 

The  Nature  of  the  Causes 

For  obvious  reasons  the  analysis  of  the  legal  causes  of  divorce 
is  of  little  value  in  the  effort  to  explain  the  rising  rate.  In  the 
first  place,  the  legal  causes  have  undergone  relatively  slight  modi-  ^ 
fications  during  the  last  forty  years.  There  is  little  perceptible 
correlation  between  statute  enactments  and  the  increase  of  di- 
vorces. As  a  matter  of  fact,  few  new  causes  have  been  added, 
and  these  in  only  a  few  states,  while  there  has  been  a  decided 
tendency  toward  stringency  in  respect  to  residence  requirements 
in  the  states  in  which  divorce  is  sought  and  in  the  prohibition 
of  remarriage  until  after  a  certain  period  has  elapsed  from  the 
granting  of  the  decree.  In  the  second  place,  it  is  clear  that  the 
legal  causes  are  frequently  not  the  real  reasons  for  securing  di- 
vorce. Regardless  of  what  the  statutes  are,  persons  whose  mari- 
tal relations  have  become  intolerable  have  ultimately  found  a  way 
of  release  from  them. 

Where  statutory  provision  is  made  for  divorce  either  the  nec- 
essary or  the  most  feasible  cause  is  utilized.  Ample  illustration 
of  this  truth  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that,  while  almost  60  per 
cent  of  all  divorces  in  the  United  States  in  forty  years  were 
granted  on  the  grounds  of  cruelty  and  desertion,  in  New  York 
State  all  are  granted  for  adultery.  The  citizens  of  New  York  are 
not  necessarily  more  immoral  than  those  of  other  states,  unless 
compelled  to  be,  either  actually  or  confessedly,  in  order  to  secure 
legal  separation  from  the  marriage  contract.  The  explanation  of 
the  fact  is,  that  adultery  is  the  only  legal  cause  for  divorce  in 
New  York.  Chancellor  Kent,  after  a  long  career  on  the  bench 
of  New  York,  stated  that  he  believed  that  sometimes  adultery  was 
committed  for  the  very  purpose  of  obtaining  a  divorce,  because 
it  could  be  secured  on  no  other  ground.1  The  same  philosophy 
applies  to  the  case  of  South  Carolina.  It  would  be  absurd  to  sup- 
pose that  the  State  is  free  from  domestic  discord  and  all  sexual 

1  Judge  Stevens,  The  Outlook,  June  8,  1907,  p.  288. 


624  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

immorality  simply  because  no  divorces  are  granted.  Divorces  are 
prohibited  in  South  Carolina.  But  we  are  not  left  to  our  theory 
as  to  the  facts. 

South  Carolina  has  found  it  necessary  to  regulate  by  law  the  proportion  of  his 
property  which  a  married  man  may  give  to  the  woman  with  whom  he  has  been 
living  in  violation  of  the  law.  As  late  as  1899,  the  courts  were  called  upon  to 
apply  this  law  in  order  to  protect  the  rights  of  the  wedded  wife  and  her  chil- 
dren, in  a  case  in  which  it  appeared  that  both  the  husband  and  the  wife  had 
been  living  in  adultery  since  the  separation.1 

It  is  clear  that  the  reason  for  the  increased  resort  to  statutory 
grounds  for  divorce  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  an  increasing 
number  of  married  persons  are  becoming  dissatisfied  with  their 
married  life,  and  are  seeking  release  from  the  marriage  contract. 
What  are  the  causes  producing  this  condition  ?  What  are  the 
disturbing  elements  that  are  increasing  the  number  of  persons 
subject  to  domestic  infelicity  and  incompatibility  which,  in  turn, 
increase  the  probability  of  adultery,  bigamy,  crime,  cruelty,  deser- 
tion, and  drunkenness?  Divorce  is  but  the  product  of  the  under- 
lying social  conditions  which  are  inherent  in  our  modern  society. 
These  causes  are  not  necessarily  "  social  evils  "  as  many  writers 
suppose.  Many  of  them  are  due  to  changes  in  the  social  envi- 
ronment, and  in  the  end  will  prove  beneficial,  although  the  effects 
arising  in  the  period  of  readjustment  may  seem  for  the  time 
disastrous. 

It  is  on  this  most  important  phase  of  the  subject  that  the  least 
study  has  thus  far  been  expended.  For  the  most  part,  thinkers 
and  writers  have  started  with  the  assumption  that  the  family,  as 
we  know  it,  is  the  final  form,  that  it  is  ideal,  and  that  any  forces 
which  tend  to  modify  it,  or  conform  it  to  different  ideals,  are  de- 
structive and  evil.  Mistaking  the  effect  for  the  cause,  and  without 
adequate  apprehension  of  the  nature  of  the  social  forces  which 
are  producing  changed  conditions  throughout  our  whole  social 
fabric,  many  have  looked  upon  the  spread  of  divorce  as  an  un- 
mitigated evil  and  have  sought  to  regulate  the  divorce  movement 
by  more  stringent  and  uniform  divorce  laws.  This  is  to  treat  the 
symptoms  rather  than  the  disease.  This  method  of  procedure 

1  Judge  Stevens,  The  Outlook,  June  8,  1907,  pp.  288-289. 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  625 

will  produce  many  good  results,  but  its  futility  in  respect  to  its 
influence  upon  the  divorce  rate  needs  no  further  demonstration 
than  a  clear  apprehension  of  the  causes  involved. 

Professor  Willcox,  in  his  able  treatise  on  The  Divorce  Problem, 
a  Study  in  Statistics,  has  made  a  most  valuable  contribution  to 
the  literature  of  the  subject,  although  he  betrays,  both  in  his 
title  and  in  his  treatment,  the  influence  of  the  current  method  of 
viewing  the  subject.  He  shows  conclusively  the  inefficiency  of  the 
legal  method  of  regulating  divorce  ;  that  there  is  no  necessary 
correlation  between  legal  causes  and  the  rate  ;  that  changes  in 
the  law  are  not  followed  by  corresponding  changes  in  the  rate ; 
"  that  the  influence  of  the  law,  if  not  nil,  is  at  least  much  less 
than  commonly  supposed."  He  closes  his  argument  with  the 
following  paragraph  : 

The  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter  is  that  law  can  do  little.  Agitation  for 
change  of  law  may  educate  public  opinion.  It  may  even  be  the  most  efficient 
means  of  education.  Such  effects  no  statistics  can  measure,  and,  therefore,  in 
a  paper  like  this,  the  educative  influence  of  law  must  be  neglected,  but  the 
immediate,  direct  and  measurable  influence  of  legislation  is  subsidiary,  unim- 
portant, almost  imperceptible.1 

The  logical  result  of  this  view  is  the  clear  perception  that  the 
real  causes  of  divorce  are  to  be  sought,  not  in  statute  enactments, 
but  in  the  nature  of  social  conditions.  From  the  point  of  view 
of  our  investigation,  this  is  Professor  Willcox's  most  original  and 
valuable  contribution.  He  presents  nine  causes  for  divorce,  all 
of  which  lie  within  the  scope  of  the  social  environment.  These 
causes  are  "  appended  as  statistical  inductions."  "  Some  are 
hardly  more  than  hypotheses  to  be  verified,  modified  or  retracted 
on  further  investigation  ;  others,  perhaps,  may  rank  as  proba- 
bilities ;  but  all  alike  are  offered  merely  as  suggestions."  2  The 
modesty  with  which  these  causes  are  presented  is  probably  due 
somewhat  to  the  consciousness  of  the  fact  that  they  are  not  an 
essential  part  of  "  A  Study  in  Statistics,"  but  are  submitted  as 
necessary  in  the  search  for  the  "  remedy "  of  divorce  viewed 
as  a  "  problem."  This  modesty,  and  the  absence  of  any  attempt 

1  Pp.  41  et  seq. 

2  The  Divorce  Problem,  a  Study  in  Statistics,  p.  62. 


626  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

at  classification  or  critical  analysis  of  the  causes,  must  not  be 
permitted  to  obscure  the  value  of  the  "suggestion."  He  has  not 
only  indicated  the  direction  in  which  we  must  look  in  order  to 
find  the  causes  of  divorce,  but  has  laid,  as  well,  the  foundation 
for  the  explanation  of  the  rising  rate. 

A  brief  analysis  of  the  causes  treated  with  reference  to  their 
bearing  on  our  problem  will  be  suggestive.1  Four  causes,  (2)  "The 
Popularization  of  Law,"  (5),  "The  Emancipation  of  Women," 
(7),  "  The  Increase  of  Industrialism,"  (8),  "  The  Spread  of  Dis- 
content," are  chiefly  identified  with  the  expanding  divorce  rate. 
All  these  with  the  exception  of  the  first  are  chiefly  aspects  of  the 
economic  phase  of  the  subject,  (i)  "Two  Conceptions  of  Mar- 
riage Law,"  and  (9)  "Two  Conceptions  of  the  Family,"  are  evi- 
dently causes  of  divorce,  but  since  they  have  been  in  vogue  since 
the  beginning  of  the  Protestant  Reformation,  some  reason  out- 
side the  ideas  themselves  must  be  given  for  the  sudden  increase 
of  their  activity  contributing  to  a  rapidly  rising  rate.  It  is  pos- 
sible that  social  and  economic  changes  provide  this  explanation. 
It  would  be  difficult  to  show  that  (3)  "  Laxity  in  Changing  and 
Administering  the  Law "  at  the  present  time  is  greater  than 
formerly.  Prompt  legislative  action  in  response  to  urgent  needs 
is  characteristic  of  modern  legislatures,  and  a  reactionary  public 
sentiment  has  tended  rather  to  influence  a  strict  interpretation 
and  enforcement  of  the  law.  It  is  by  no  means  established  that 
early  marriages  are  freest  from  divorce.  On  the  contrary,  many 
conclude  that  later  marriages  are  more  lasting,  in  which  case  our 
increased  (4)  "  Age  of  Marriage  "  would  tend  to  decrease  the 
rate  of  divorce.  (6)  "  The  Growth  of  Cities  "  is  not  a  factor  of 
great  importance,  since  the  last  report  shows  a  rate  of  increase 
in  rural  districts,  if  not  equaling  at  least  approximating  that  of 
the  urban. 

From  this  hasty  review  it  will  be  seen  that  while  the  causes 
here  assigned  are  for  the  most  part  valid,  as  far  as  they  go,  they 
fall  short  of  an  adequate  explanation  of  the  phenomena  of  the 
modern  divorce  movement. 

1  The  Divorce  Problem,  A  Study  in  Statistics,  pp.  62  et  set/. 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  627 

Professor  Howard,  seeking  for  the  causes  of  the  divorce  move- 
ment, inquires : 

But  do  not  "  bad  marriages  "  really  go  to  the  heart  of  the  problem  ?  Mar- 
riages, not  legally,  but  sociologically  bad,  are  meant.  They  include  frivolous, 
mercenary,  ignorant,  and  physiologically  vicious  unions.  They  embrace  all 
that  would  be  forbidden  by  Francis  Galton's  science  of  Eugenics ;  all  that 
might  in  part  be  prevented  by  a  right  system  of  education.  Indeed,  bad  mar- 
riages are  the  cause  of  the  clash  of  ideals  referred  to.  At  present  men  and 
more  frequently  women  enter  into  wedlock  ignorantly,  or  with  a  vague  or  low 
ideal  of  its  true  meaning.  The  higher  ideal  of  right  connubial  life,  of  spiritual 
connubial  life,  often  comes  after  the  ceremony.  It  is  e.v  post  facto ;  and  it  is 
forced  upon  the  aggrieved  by  suffering,  cruelty,  lack  of  compatibility,  "  prosti- 
tution within  the  marriage  bond."  An  adequate  system  of  social  and  sex  edu- 
cation would  tend  to  establish  such  ideals  before  the  ceremony.  "  An  ounce 
of  prevention  is  worth  a  pound  of  cure."  1 

We  are  not  disposed  in  the  least  degree  to  question  the  validity 
of  "  bad  marriages  "  as  a  cause  of  divorce.  Professor  Howard  has 
laid  rightly  great  emphasis  here.  We  should  be  willing  to  include 
legally  as  well  as  sociologically  bad  marriages  as  a  cause  of  many 
divorces.  It  is  only  as  an  interpretation  of  the  rapid  increase  of 
the  divorce  movement  that  we  think  Professor  Howard's  explana- 
tion does  not  "go  to  the  heart  of  the  problem."  Is  it  here,  in 
fact,  not  putting  effect  for  cause  ?  It  is  difficult  to  believe  that 
sociologically  vicious  unions  are  more  numerous  than  formerly, 
and  if  they  are,  there  must  be  some  cause  for  the  phenomenon. 
Is  it  not  a  fact,  rather,  that  the  "  mighty  forces  of  spiritual  libera- 
tion "  are  simply  revealing  more  and  more  the  presence  of  such 
unions  ?  Is  it  not  true  that  the  pressure  due  to  changes  in  the 
social  environment  is  operating  to  render  sociologically  bad  mar- 
riages unendurable,  whereas  under  former  conditions  they  were 
not  discovered  to  be  bad,  and  even  to  make  it  more  difficult  for 
sociologically  good  marriages  to  survive  ? 

If  our  study,  therefore,  is  to  possess  any  scientific  value  it  must 
go  deeper  into  the  problem  of  social  causation.    \Ve  must  inquire  v 
into  the  great  economic,  social,  and  religious  movements  which, 

1  Publications  of  the  American  Sociological  Society,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  179. 


628  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

since  the  Civil  War,  have  wrought  such  profound  changes  through- 
out the  whole  structure  of  our  American  life,  in  order  to  ascertain 
their  influence  upon  the  divorce  rate.  It  is  in  such  a  study,  and 
there  alone,  that  we  shall  find  the  causes  that  lie  back  of  our  di- 
vorce movement ;  that  render  the  increasing  resort  to  the  divorce 
courts  one  of  the  most  interesting  and  important  facts  of  our 
social  situation. 

ECONOMIC  DEVELOPMENT 
Modern  Standards  of  Living 

Increased  cost  of  living  has  subjected  domestic  institutions  to 
another  strain  that  is  ever  more  burdensome.  This  is  due,  in 
part,  to  the  greater  cost  of  the  necessary  articles  of  consumption 
and  the  necessity  of  purchasing  many  things  formerly  produced 
within  the  family  itself,  but  much  more  in  the  number  and  nature 
of  the  increasing  wants  of  the  modern  family.  The  multiplication 
of  wants  has  far  exceeded  the  growth  of  incomes.  Luxuries  in 
the  way  of  food,  clothing,  dwelling,  and  home  comforts  of  a  gen- 
eration ago  have  become  necessities  of  the  present.  This  is  quite 
as  true  in  the  country  as  in  the  city,  and  applies  in  the  main  to 
the  middle  classes.  The  pressure  of  modern  competition  is  felt 
not  only  within  the  circle  of  industry  and  commerce,  but  also  in 
the  realm  of  household  economy,  and  it  is  a  question  where  its 
results  are  more  disastrous  when  it  exceeds  wholesome  limits. 
The  struggle  to  maintain  a  certain  standard  of  living  is  not  due 
only  nor  chiefly  to  the  comfort  and  convenience  secured.  The 
chief  incentive  is  to  be  found  in  that  pride  of  self-aggrandize- 
ment which  seeks  to  outclass  others  in  the  same  social  scale. 
Appearances  outweigh  comforts.  The  desire  to  excel  becomes 
the  ruling  passion  in  countless  homes  among  the  middle  and 
well-to-do  classes  and  expenditures  are  indulged  in  for  the  sake 
of  gratifications  that  do  not  minister  to  the  peace  and  happiness 
of  home  life.  These  are  often  quite  beyond  the  legitimate  and 
available  means  of  the  family  and  entail  anxiety  and  often  hard- 
ship. Thus  ostentation  is  esteemed  of  greater  consequence  than 
domestic  happiness  and  the  price  paid  for  the  former  is  often 
the  sacrifice  of  the  latter. 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  629 

All  these  things  increase  the  burden  of  the  family  mainte- 
nance without  adequate  compensation.  If  they  do  not  actually 
create  friction,  which  they  frequently  do,  they  create  conditions, 
through  overwrought  nerves  and  irritable  dispositions,  favorable  to 
the  growth  of  infelicity  and  estrangement  within  the  marriage  bond. 

Pressure  of  Modern  Economic  Life  upon  the  Home 

A  condition  of  serious  importance  is  the  crowding  of  modern 
business  upon  the  precincts  of  the  home.  This  applies  chiefly  to 
the  homes  of  the  laboring  classes.  The  centralization  of  industry 
in  factory  production  has  produced  a  congestion  of  population  in 
manufacturing  centers.  People  are  forced  to  live  in  tenements 
and  flats  in  crowded  conditions  without  sufficient  fresh  air  and 
sunshine,  under  circumstances  not  conducive  to  health,  happiness 
or  good  morals.  Home  life  under  such  conditions  cannot  be 
ideal.  The  feeling  of  permanence  is  absent  in  the  rented  flat. 
Where  the  wife  and  the  children,  as  soon  as  they  are  old  enough, 
must  seek  employment  in  order  to  supplement  the  family  income 
to  the  point  of  subsistence,  the  competence  is  secured  at  the  sac- 
rifice of  home  comforts.  The  "  family  residence  "  becomes  little 
more  than  a  place  for  eating  and  sleeping,  and  its  unity  and  its 
value  as  a  social  institution  are  greatly  impaired.  The  situation  is 
not  improved  if  the  work  is  brought  into  the  homes  and  the  family 
abodes  turned  into  a  sweatshop.  In  countless  instances  the  family 
endures  this  test,  but  it  renders  the  probabilities  less  and  less. 

Where  married  women,  through  hard  necessity,  have  been 
compelled  to  follow  their  work  to  the  school,  the  shop,  and  the 
factory,  their  removal  from  the  home  during  working  hours  is  a 
serious  menace.  Nervous  and  physical  exhaustion  renders  them 
unfit  for  the  duties  of  wife  and  mother.  August  Bebel  draws  a 
picture  of  such  a  home  : 

Both  husband  and  wife  go  to  work.  The  children  are  left  to  themselves  or  to 
the  care  of  older  brothers  and  sisters,  who  themselves  need  care  and  education. 
At  the  noon  hour  the  luncheon  is  eaten  in  a  great  hurry,  provided  that  the 
parents  have  at  all  time  to  hasten  home,  which  in  thousands  of  cases  is  not 
possible  on  account  of  the  shortness  of  the  recess  and  the  distance  of  the 
place  of  work  from  home.  Weary  and  exhausted  they  return  home  at  night. 
Instead  of  a  friendly  and  agreeable  habitation,  they  find  a  small,  unhealthful 


630  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

dwelling,  often  devoid  of  light  and  air  and  most  of  the  necessary  comforts. 
The  increasing  tenement-house  problem  with  the  revolting  improprieties  that 
grow  therefrom,  constitutes  one  of  the  darkest  sides  of  our  social  order,  which 
leads  to  countless  evils,  to  vices  and  crimes.  And  the  tenement-house  problem 
in  all  the  cities  and  industrial  regions  becomes  greater  each  year,  and  embraces 
in  its  evils  ever  larger  circles  —  small  producers,  public  officers,  teachers,  small 
shop-keepers,  etc.  The  laborer's  wife,  who  comes  home  in  the  evening  tired 
and  worried,  has  now  new  duties  to  perform.  She  must  work  desperately  to 
set  in  order  merely  the  necessities  of  her  household.  The  crying  and  noisy 
children  having  been  put  to  bed,  the  wife  sits  and  sews  and  patches  till  late  in 
the  night.  The  so  much  needed  intellectual  intercourse  and  good  cheer  are 
denied  her.  The  husband  is  quite  often  uneducated  and  knows  little,  the  wife 
still  less.  The  little  they  have  to  say  to  each  other  is  soon  said.  The  husband 
goes  to  the  saloon  and  seeks  there  the  entertainment  which  his  home  fails  to 
supply.  He  drinks,  and  however  little  it  is  that  he  consumes,  it  is  too  much 
for  his  circumstances.  Under  these  conditions  he  falls  a  prey  to  the  temptation 
of  gambling,  which  claims  its  victims  also  in  the  higher  circles  of  society,  and 
he  loses  more  than  he  spends  for  drink.  Meanwhile  the  wife  sits  at  home  and 
complains  ;  she  must  work  like  a  beast  of  burden.  For  her  there  is  no  rest,  no 
recreation.  Thus  there  arises  disharmony.  If,  however,  the  wife  is  less  true 
to  her  duties  and  seeks,  in  the  evening  after  she  returns  home  weary  from  her 
work,  the  recreation  she  is  entitled  to,  then  the  home  is  left  in  disorder  and 
the  misery  is  doubled.1 

Thus  the  neglected  house  loses  much  of  home  charm.  The  hard 
struggle  for  bread  takes  the  romance  out  of  life ;  and  human 
weaknesses,  which  otherwise  might  not  affect  the  peace  and  har- 
mony of  the  home,  are  apt  to  be  intensified  until  they  become 
too  great  for  overwrought  nerves  to  endure. 

Among  the  more  fortunate  an  equally  grave  situation  confronts 
us.  With  the  passing  of  their  occupation  in  the  home  many 
women  come  to  regard  economic  dependence  upon  men  as  a 
necessary  consequence,  and  "look  upon  wedlock  as  an  economic 
vocation.  With  them  marriage  tends  to  become  a  species  of 
purchase-contract  in  which  the  woman  barters  her  sex-capital  to 
the  man  in  exchange  for  life  support."  2 

There  are  thousands  of  women  of  the  miscalled  "  better  "  classes  who  live 
in  boarding  houses  and  hotels  in  idle  ease,  or  in  homes  where  they  are  fig- 
ureheads, posing  as  their  husbands1  exalted  head  servants,  but  whose  only 
ambition  in  life  is  to  be  accredited  with  respectability,  and  whose  only 

1  Die  Frau  und  der  Sozalismus.  p.  124. 

2  Howard,  History  of  Matrimonial  Institutions,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  249. 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  631 

occupation  is   to   render  sex  service,  mostly  barren,   to   the  husbands  who 
furnish  support  as  compensation. 

Such  wives  are  not  chattel  slaves,  but  willing  dependents.  They  are  not 
the  drudging  house  servants  of  old,  nor  the  colaborers  of  their  husbands, 
as  in  our  rural  population.  They  differ  in  no  essential  from  the  kept  woman, 
unless  we  have  so  low  an  estimate  of  the  marriage  state  that  we  call  the 
ceremony  the  essence,  and  a  carelessly  misplaced  "  respectability  "  the  final 
test  of  marriage  morals.1 

As  a  result  marriage  becomes  frequently  little  more  than 
"legalized  prostitution"  and  is,  on  the  whole,  thoroughly  inca- 
pable of  affording  the  happiness  which  the  marriage  relation  is 
designed  to  impart.  "  Cupid  yields  to  cupidity,"  and  the  proba- 
bility of  permanency  under  such  conditions  becomes  slight.  It 
is  notably  this  class  which  furnishes  the  "  divorce  scandals  in 
high  life  "  and  renders  the  subject  revolting  to  all  right-thinking 
people.  It  is  failure  here  rightly  to  discriminate,  that  causes  the 
reproach  to  be  cast  upon  the  worthy  woman  who  seeks  release 
from  conditions  that  destroy  her  happiness  and  compromise  her 
womanhood. 

Passtifg  of  the  Economic  Function  of  the  Family 

Here  is  an  element  in  the  economic  situation  of  prime  impor- 
tance. At  the  beginning  of  the  modern  economic  era  the  family 
was  the  economic  unit  of  society.  It  was  an  institution  of  expe- 
diency. It  was  usually  large  and  lived  close  to  the  soil.  It  was 
an  economic  necessity.  Its  function  involved  not  only  the  essen- 
tial elements  of  race  maintenance  and  individual  well-being,  but 
of  economic  life  as  well.  Women  were  of  economic  necessity 
home-keepers.  Their  time  arid  skill  were  required  to  the  utmost. 
If  there  existed  incompatibility  between  husband  and  wife,  the 
care  of  children  and  the  economic  necessities  of  the  family 
afforded  the  strongest  possible  incentive  for  adjusting  or  suffering 
the  difficulties. 

Within  two  generations  changed  economic  conditions  have 
wrought  the  most  profound  transformations  ever  experienced  by 
the  race.  Within  the  modern  economic  area  population  is  rapidly 

1  Schroeder,  The  Arena,  December,  1905,  pp.  586-587. 


632  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

becoming  urban,  and  with  the  growth  of  modern  industry  the 
economic  function  of  the  family  is  passing  away.  Children  are 
no  longer  "brought  up"  in  the  home  as  formerly.  Their  educa- 
tion has  been  taken  in  hand  by  the  state,  for  which  they  are 
removed  from  the  home  for  several  hours  each  day.  Kindergar- 
ten, public  school  and  college  accomplish  this  far  more  skillfully 
than  former  methods.  The  religious  training  is  almost  wholly 
provided  by  the  Sunday  school  and  the  church.  Occupations  are 
taught  in  the  professional  and  technical  schools  without  the  long 
and  unprofitable  period  of  apprenticeship  formerly  required.  The 
function  of  production,  except  of  raw  materials,  has  passed  over 
to  the  shop  and  factory.  The  farmer  produces  less  of  the  articles 
of  his  more  elaborate  table  than  formerly,  and  depends  quite  as 
much  for  clothing  and  household  necessities  upon  factory  pro- 
duction as  the  dweller  in  the  city.  Much  of  the  cooking,  sew- 
ing, washing,  and  ironing  for  the  family  is  done  better  and  more 
cheaply  in  the  bakery,  factory,  and  laundry  than  in  the  home. 

Thus  the  lightening  of  household  cares  has  become  one  of  the 
interesting  features  of  the  influence  of  modern  methods  of  indus- 
try upon  the  institution  of  the  family,  and  herein  lies  the  hope 
of  the  improved  family  of  the  future. 

But  with  the  passing  of  the  economic  function  the  family 
ceases  to  be  an  economic  unit.  The  members  of  the  household 
are  not  interdependent  as  formerly.  The  home  is  maintained 
more  as  a  comfort  and  a  luxury  than  as  a  necessity,  the  cost 
becomes  more  burdensome  in  proportion  to  the  service  rendered, 
and  the  temptation  to  "break  up  housekeeping"  increases.  It  is 
cheaper  to  board. 

In  this  manner  is  being  removed,  to  a  large  extent,  what  Pro- 
fessor Sumner  regards  as  one  of  the  most  fundamental  motives 
for  the  origin  of  the  family,1  and  what  has  continued  to  be  one 
of  the  strongest  reasons  for  its  perpetuation.  The  new  industry  of 
the  boarding  house  and  the  bachelor  apartment,  and  the  oppor- 
tunities of  individual  employment  offered  in  modern  economic 
production  without  regard  to  sex,  have  shown  their  influence  in 
the  later  age  at  which  marriage  is  contracted  and  probably  also 

1  Publications  of  the  American  Sociological  Society,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  i. 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  633 

in  an  increasing  number  of  persons  who  do  not  marry  at  all. 
The  same  opportunities  are  open  to  the  members  of  the  broken 
family.  If,  therefore,  other  reasons  do  not  exist  for  its  continu- 
ance, economic  ones  will  scarcely  prove  sufficient  to  hold  the  family 
together,  and  the  divorce  rate  will  register  the  result. 

1 

Economic  Emancipation  of  Women 

Economic  evolution,  so  far  as  it  bears  upon  the  subject  of 
divorce,  is  producing  no  more  significant  result  than  the  emanci- 
pation of  women.  Human  beings  "  are  the  only  animal  species 
in  which  the  female  depends  upon  the  male  for  food,  the  only 
animal  species  in  which  the  sex  relation  is  also  an  economic 
relation.  With  us  an  entire  sex  lives  in  a  relation  of  economic 
dependence  upon  the  other  sex."  l  Whether  this  relation  is  due 
to  the  "  peculiarities  of  women  as  sexual  beings,"  or  to  causes 
inherent  in  our  economic  system,  or  to  both,  to  the  fact  itself 
may  be  ascribed  the  oppression  and  subjugation  of  women  in  all 
the  various  phases  through  which  the  institution  of  marriage  has 
thus  far  passed.  On  this  basis  property  rights  are  established  and 
maintained.  In  general,  through  the  whole  historic  period,  among 
civilized  peoples,  as  well  as  among  savages  and  barbarians,  woman 
has  sustained  to  man  the  relation  of  personal  property.  Whether 
stolen,  purchased,  or  "given  in  marriage,"  the  wife  has  "be-  </ 
longed  "  to  her  husband.  Formerly  he  might  sell  her,  lend  her, 
or  destroy  her  according  to  his  pleasure  or  advantage.  Not  only 
her  person  but  her  children  and  the  products  of  her  toil,  like  that 
of  the  slave,  were  his.  Marriage  was  coercive.  Rarely  did  the 
woman  enjoy  the  privilege  of  choosing  motherhood  or  even  of 
deciding  who  the  father  of  her  children  should  be.  She  may  have 
been,  often  was,  well  fed,  cared  for  and  protected,  and  her  posi- 
tion was  not  consciously  oppressive,  but  her  dependence  dwarfed 
her  personality,  retarded  her  physical  and  intellectual  develop- 
ment, and  modified  her  to  sex  to  the  detriment  of  the  race. 

It  is  to  be  anticipated  that  the  emancipation  of  one  half  of  the 
human  race  from  bondage  to  the  other  half  will  be  followed  by 

1  Oilman,  Women  and  Economics,  p.  5. 


634  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

fundamental  changes  in  social  relations.  This  is  exactly  what  is 
taking  place  within  domestic  circles  at  the  present  time.  In  so 
far  as  the  family  is  held  together  by  coercive  marital  authority, 
it  is  destined  to  disintegrate.  The  economic  patriarchal  family 
has  fulfilled  its  function  and,  as  such,  will  cease  to  exist. 

Education  and  a  developing  personality  as  a  result  of  her  im- 
proved social  status  has  qualified  woman  for  larger  service  to 
society,  and  economic  conditions  have  furnished  the  opportunity. 
Thus  the  field  for  individual  effort  and  the  free  investment  of  her 
labor-capital  in  the  world's  market  has  become  open  to  her  on 
more  nearly  equal  terms  with  men.  We  may  safely  predict  that 
with  the  further  development  of  industry  the  opportunity  for 
female  employment  will  continue  to  enlarge. 

Nor  is  the  economic  motive  lacking.  Woman  may  have  worked 
as  hard  and  produced  as  much  under  the  old  regime  of  domestic 
economy,  but  she  received  no  pay.  Her  service  was  in  a  meas- 
ure gratuitous.  It  was  a  part  of  her  household  duties  which  she 
owed  to  husband  and  family.  She  was  not  free.  In  the  new 
forms  of  service  open  to  her  she  enters  as  a  free  competitor. 
Wages  are  reckoned  on  the  basis  of  capacity  and  are  paid  to  her. 
Regardless  of  conjugal  condition  she  is  treated  as  an  individual.1 
She  is  independent. 

Another  great  obstacle  to  her  freedom  is  rapidly  passing  away. 
At  the  opening  of  the  industrial  period  popular  sentiment  was 
decidedly  opposed  to  female  employment.  She  was  going  out  of 
her  "  sphere."  She  might  drudge  and  slave  within  her  own  home 
until  her  physical  strength  was  exhausted.  That  was  her  duty. 
But  to  invade  the  ranks  of  public  labor  was  "unbecoming."  It 
was  dangerous  to  her  health  and  morals.  Gradually,  however, 
economic  pressure  and  growing  sanity  are  removing  this  prejudice. 
The  recognition  of  her  right  as  a  human  being  to  self-direction  is 
overcoming  the  distinction  of  sex.  The  field  is  open,  the  motive 
is  supplied  and  traditions  concerning  propriety  must  adjust  them- 
selves to  the  new  conditions.  If  present  tendencies  are  not  inter- 
rupted we  may  safely  predict  the  coming  of  a  time,  in  the  not 

1  Not  strictly  true,  as  the  policy,  in  some  cities,  of  discharging  a  public-school 
teacher  who  marries  while  in  office  shows.  —  ED. 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  635 

distant  future,  when  reproach  will  not  rest  upon  "the  women  who 
work,"  as  it  does  not  now  upon  the  professional  woman,  but  will 
rest  upon  those  who  accept  idle  dependence  upon  husband  or 
father  as  their  natural  right. 

The  influence  of  the  new  economic  status  of  woman  upon  the  , 
divorce  rate  is  readily  perceived.  Marriage  is  no  longer  the  only 
vocation  open  to  her  and  for  which  she  is  qualified.  She  is  not 
forced  into  marriage  as  her  only  means  of  support,  and  later 
marriages  and  lower  birth  rates  reveal  the  influence  of  this  .fact. 
If  marriage  is  a  failure,  she  does  not  face  the  alternative  of  en- 
durance or  starvation.  The  'way  is  open  to  independent  support 
and  under  diminishing  opprobrium.  Conscious  of  her  legal  rights, 
and  protected  in  the  use  of  property  or  income,  she  is  no  longer 
compelled  to  accept  support  or  yield  to  the  tyranny  of  a  husband 
whose  conduct  is  a  menace  to  her  health  and  happiness. 

Thus  the  removal  of  restraints,  due  to  economic  opportunities 
and  the  new  social  consciousness  of  women,  is  ample  reason  for 
increased  resort  of  women  to  statutory  grounds  for  the  dissolu- 
tion of  the  marriage  tie.  This  conclusion  is  amply  justified  in 
the  fact  that  66.6  per  cent  of  all  divorces  in  the  United  States  / 
are  now  granted  on  the  petition  of  the  wife. 

Another  phase  of  the  subject  growing  out  of  woman's  improved 
economic  and  social  status,  coupled  with  changed  ideals  of  the 
family,  is  to  be  found  in  the  voluntary  limitation  of  the  birth 
rate.  While  the  automatic  limitation,  due  to  later  marriages,  can- 
not seriously  affect  the  question  of  domestic  tranquillity,  the  de- 
liberate effort,  and  its  results,  become  a  serious  menace.  Children 
are  an  impediment  to  those  striving  after  a  higher  standard  of  living 
or  social  preferment.  So  that,  where  the  economic  burden  of  sup- 
port on  the  part  of  the  husband  and  the  physical  inconvenience 
and  suffering  of  the  wife,  are  viewed  in  the  light  of  limitation  of 
individual  opportunity  and  personal  advancement,  the  motive  for 
restricting  the  number  of  children  becomes  dominant.  "  The  grow- 
ing desire  to  escape  the  natural  consequences  of  matrimonial  life 
has  created  a  new  mental  disease,  the  fear  of  conception,  which 
makes  a  mental  wreck  of  many  a  normal  and  healthy  woman."  1 

1  Rubinow,  American  Journal  of  Sociology,  March,  1907,  p.  629. 


636  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

The  result  is  likely  to  be  either  the  restriction  of  conjugal  privi- 
leges between  husband  and  wife,  with  consequent  irregularities 
outside  the  home,  which  increase  the  probabilities  of  divorce  on 
the  ground  of  adultery,  or  to  continued  relations,  sterile  as  far  as 
the  increase  of  the  family  is  concerned,  which  breed  all  manner 
of  dissatisfaction  and  discontent  and  become  a  prolific  cause  for  di- 
vorce upon  the  grounds  of  adultery,  incompatibility,  and  desertion. 

Economic  development,  therefore,  bears  a  causal  relation  to 
the  rise  of  the  divorce  rate.  The  pressure  of  modern  economic 
conditions  upon  the  home  life  of  the  people,  the  rising  standard 
of  living,  the  pressure  of  modern  business  upon  the  home,  the 
change  which  the  function  of  the  home  is  undergoing  because  of 
its  changed  economic  environment,  and  the  greater  freedom  and 
opportunity  of  women  to  participate  in  the  world's  work,  consti- 
tute the  chief  reasons,  so  far  as  economic  conditions  are  con- 
cerned, why  we  may  expect,  during  adjustments  consequent  upon 
these  fundamental  changes,  to  see  the  number  of  divorces  in- 
crease. It  will  be  conceded  freely  that  these  changes  and  new 
conditions  give  rise  to  many  new  causes  of  friction  and  irritation 
between  married  people  which  did  not  hitherto  exist,  but  aside 
from  these  considerations,  we  believe  that  the  chief  factor  in  the 
problem  is  the  circumstances  which  have  made  effective  dormant 
causes  which  but  for  the  changed  condition  would  never  have 
come  to  expression  in  the  resort  to  divorce  on  the  statutory 
grounds  recognized  by  the  courts. 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS 
The  Struggle  for  Social  Liberation 

The  struggle  for  social  liberation,  and  the  reconstruction  of  the 
social  order  in  the  interest  of  the  greater  freedom  of  the  individual, 
the  greater  security  guaranteed  by  the  law,  the  increased  enlight- 
enment of  the  masses,  the  larger  liberty  of  free  speech,  free  press, 
and  free  assembly  — in  short,  the  whole  democratic  movement  of 
modern  times,  aside  from  its  purely  political  aspects  —  is  most 
significant  as  to  its  effect  upon  the  rising  divorce  rate. 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  637 

The  marriage  relation,  through  the  changes  wrought  by  the 
Reformation,  ceased  to  be  regarded  as  a  sacrament  and  became 
a  social  contract.  We  have  noted  the  effects  of  the  economic 
revolution  upon  the  domestic  institution.  We  have  now  to  observe 
that  under  the  sway  of  liberalistic  tendencies  the  old  authority  of 
the  family  has  been  weakened  and  a  new  basis  has  to  be  sought 
for  its  justification  which  will  have  greater  respect  for  the  growing 
demands  of  personality. 

That  the  movement  in  the  direction  of  social  progress  has 
been  increasingly  rapid  in  America  since  the  Civil  War  scarcely 
requires  demonstration.  Beginning  with  the  emancipation  of  the 
negro  through  the  incident  of  the  war  itself,  the  process  has  gone 
on,  affecting  whole  classes  and  groups,  in  a  social  amelioration 
which  has  been  none  the  less  real  because  its  methods  have  been 
less  spectacular.  Increased  complexity  of  ethnic  elements  has 
increased  our  plasticity  and  progressiveness  without  endangering 
our  political  and  social  cohesion.  General  enlightenment  and 
culture  have  maintained  an  even  pace  with  our  material  pros- 
perity, thus  strengthening  the  foundations  of  our  national  life, 
while  the  growth  of  science  in  its  application  to  the  social  realm 
has  exceeded  its  triumphs  in  any  other  field. 

It  is  foreign  to  our  purpose  to  treat  the  history  of  this  progress. 
It  is  sufficient  to  point  out  that  its  results  have  been  inevitable 
and  that  the  end  is  not  yet.  A  few  of  the  achievements  of  this 
movement,  significant  for  our  study,  may  briefly  be  cited. 

Liberalism  and  the  American  Spirit  ^ 

The  United  States  beyond  any  other  nation,  with  the  possible 
exception  of  Great  Britain,  has  achieved  distinction  through  the 
high  degree  of  civil  liberty  and  personal  freedom  guaranteed  by 
the  constitution.  A  typical  example  of  modern  progress  is  here 
afforded.  The  intensification  of  the  feeling  of  nationality  and  the 
social  self-consciousness  of  the  nation  as  a  whole  has  been  accom- 
panied by  an  increasing  realization  of  personality  on  the  part  of 
the  citizen.  Within  the  large  latitude  thus  enjoyed  a  great  flexi- 
bility of  the  social  organism  has  been  developed.  Voluntary  asso- 
ciations for  the  promotion  of  the  political,  social,  and  economic 


638  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

welfare  constitute  relatively  a  larger  part  of  our  collective  activities 
than  of  that  of  any  other  people.  Based  upon  a  frank  utilitarian- 
ism, social  forms  and  institutions,  of  whatever  sort,  do  not  exist 
for  themselves,  but  for  the  benefit  of  those  that  create  them.  A 
critical  and  scientific  attitude  is  therefore  maintained  toward  them 
and  they  are  held  to  a  strict  accountability  as  to  the  performance 
of  their  proper  function.  Free  from  many  of  the  traditions  con- 
cerning the  inherent  sacredness  of  institutions  which  appertain 
to  a  monarchial  or  despotic  form  of  government,  Americans  are 
not  fearful  of  social  disaster  in  making  whatever  changes  are  de- 
manded by  an  expanding  social  life.  Change  for  us  does  not 
mean  social  disintegration,  but  is  rather  viewed  as  the  condition 
of  a  sustained  progress. 

This  spirit  of  liberalism  has  had  far-reaching  results.  Objec- 
tively, it  has  made  for  efficiency  through  our  whole  social  organi- 
zation and  has  prevented  fixity  of  type.  Subjectively,  it  has  been 
productive  of  the  open  mind.  As  a  total  result  we  have  arrived 
at  a  state  of  complacency  in  regard  to  the  perpetuity  of  our 
free  institutions  which  no  alarmist  propaganda  is  able  to  disturb. 
Prophecies  of  dire  political  and  social  disintegration  are  not  able 
to  stampede  any  considerable  number  of  the  people  at  any  time. 
Since  sufficient  time  has  not  elapsed  to  afford  an  adequate  test 
of  many  of  our  institutions,  confidence  in  their  stability  is  less  a 
product  of  experience  than  of  conviction.  It  is  the  result  of  our 
faith  in  the  principles  of  social  evolution  ultimately  to  accomplish 
our  highest  social  good. 

In  this  general  attitude  of  mind  we  discover  a  basic  reason 
for  the  phenomenon  we  are  seeking  to  explain.  We  observe  the 
family  from  the  same  point  of  view  from  which  all  other  social 
institutions  are  regarded.  It  enjoys  no  special  protection  or  taboo 
which  shields  it  from  the  test  of  utilitarianism.  It,  with  all  others, 
must  serve  the  end  of  its  existence  or  undergo  transformation. 
As  other  higher  ethical  considerations  are  added  to  the  function 
of  race  maintenance  the  test  of  efficiency  becomes  of  greater  im- 
portance. Failure  becomes  an  increasing  calamity.  Since  it  is 
not  compatible  with  American  ideals  of  justice  and  freedom  that 
the  institution  should  be  held  more  sacred  than  the  individual, 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  639 

the  remedy  is  to  be  found  in  the  transformation  of  the  former 
rather  than  in  the  sacrifice  of  the  latter. 

When,  therefore,  changed  economic  conditions  and  other  in- 
fluences incident  to  the  industrial  revolution  began  to  exert  an 
increasing  pressure  upon  the  family  and  to  compel  a  new  adjust- 
ment because  of  the  inadequacy  of  the  older  forms,  there  was 
not  encountered  the  stolid  opposition  based  upon  tradition  to  be 
found  among  older  and  more  staid  commonwealths.  The  process 
of  social  evolution  had  fewer  obstacles  to  encounter  and  hence 
the  rapidity  of  its  advance. 

We  have  here,  then,  one  of  the  influential  psychological  ele- 
ments which  helps  to  explain  why  the  rate  of  divorce,  which  is 
rising  all  over  the  civilized  world,  is  more  rapid  in  the  United 
States  than  in  any  other  country. 

As  touching  the  rate  of  divorce,  the  influence  of  individualism 
results  in  a  strong  tendency  to  resort  to  family  relations  that  pro- 
mote individual  welfare.  When  the  union  results  unfavorably  to 
this  end,  there  is  destined  to  be  speedy  and  free  recourse  to  the 
statutory  grounds  for  legal  separation.  Divorce  laws  may  remain 
the  same  ;  they  may  even  become  more  stringent ;  legal  sanctions 
may  be  backed  up  by  popular  prejudices,  but  the  divorce  rate  will 
tend  to  rise  wherever  this  tendency  operates  until  improved  con- 
ditions in  the  family  are  secured.  That  this  cause  has  become 
increasingly  operative  in  the  period  of  our  study  is  due  to  the 
fact  that  it  could  produce  its  results  only  under  the  changed 
economic,  social,  and  religious  conditions  which  have  removed 
the  hindrances  formerly  obstructing  its  operation. 

Popularization  of  Law 

One  of  the  interesting  outgrowths  of  our  social  development 
has  been  the  popularization  of  law.  Professor  Willcox  has  not 
only  presented  this  point  in  an  able  and  graphic  manner,  but  he 
has  connected  it  definitely  with  the  "  rate  of  increase."  We  can- 
not do  better  than  to  quote  his  paragraphs  : 

During  the  Middle  Ages  law  was  a  personal  privilege.    For  centuries  legal 
forms  of  procedure  continued  so  intricate  and  expensive  that  the  benefits  of 


640  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  law  accrued  only  to  the  wise  or  wealthy.  Along  with  extension  of  the 
suffrage  in  modern  times  has  come  an  almost  equal  extension  of  legal  privi- 
leges. Whole  classes  have  been  admitted  to  court  that  were  formerly  excluded 
by  the  efficient  practical  prohibitions  of  ignorance  and  poverty.  The  change  in 
the  position  of  the  negro,  effected  by  his  emancipation,  is  but  a  single  striking 
illustration  of  what  has  been  going  on  constantly  as  the  result,  on  the  one  hand, 
of  laws  simplifying  procedure  and  diminishing  the  expense  of  legislation,  and, 
on  the  other,  of  the  better  education  of  the  community  in  matters  of  law.  This 
education  is  conducted  largely  by  the  newspaper  press  of  the  country.  Many 
a  man  would  live  in  ignorance  that  such  a  thing  as  divorce  existed  were  it  not 
for  the  conspicuous  mention  of  trials  in  his  morning  paper.  Thus  the  law  has 
become  a  weapon  of  offense  or  defense  for  a  very  much  larger  part  of  the  popu- 
lation than  could  use  it  even  so  recently  as  fifty  years  ago.  In  considering  the 
rate  of  increase  estimated  from  the  figures  this  must  be  borne  carefully  in  mind.1 


Increase  of  Popular  Learning 

The  function  of  popular  education  both  in  the  production  and 
in  the  defense  of  individual  and  social  liberty  cannot  be  overes- 
timated. Knowledge,  here  as  elsewhere,  is  power.  The  rise  of 
culture  is  accompanied  by  increased  self-confidence  and  efficiency 
both  in  the  individual  and  in  the  group.  It  results  in  emanci- 
pation from  superstition  and  tradition.  The  growth  of  scientific 
knowledge,  with  its  respect  for  orderly  sequence  in  nature  and 
events,  is  not  only  productive  of  economic  prudence  and  provi- 
dence, but  develops  the  power  of  foresight  and  self-direction  in 
every  aspect  of  social  conduct.  In  a  population  thus  intellectually 
equipped,  all  manner  of  obstructions  that  hinder  freedom  and 
progress,  whether  due  to  the  tyranny  of  men  or  the  domination 
of  traditions,  become  increasingly  obnoxious.  This  results,  not 
because  conditions  are  worse,  but  because  under  higher  degrees 
of  enlightenment  they  are  more  clearly  perceived.  Much  of  the 
social  unrest  of  our  time  is  due,  not  to  more  unwholesome  social 
conditions,  for  social  conditions  in  general  have  been  greatly 
improved,  but  to  the  higher  degree  of  intelligence  enjoyed  by 
the  masses  which  makes  injustice  and  inequality  of  opportunity 
harder  to  bear  with  resignation.  Wrongs  are  more  keenly  felt 
and  as  a  result  rights  are  more  persistently  demanded. 

1  The  Divorce  Problem,  pp.  63-64. 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  641 

Imagine  now  that  we  have  a  situation  in  which  every  other 
condition  of  marriage  remains  unchanged.  Given  a  rapid  increase 
in  education  and  culture  and  the  influence  of  this  factor  will  at 
once  appear.  Here,  as  in  every  other  relation,  wrongs  and  in- 
equalities exist.  Previously,  they  have  not  been  sufficient  to  dis- 
rupt the  family  tie ;  they  have  simply  been  endured.  With  the 
keener  recognition  of  the  difficulties  they  become  a  greater 
burden,  and  if  too  deeply  rooted  to  be  righted,  they  become  in 
time  insufferable.  This  is  not  at  all  an  unwholesome  condition, 
though  its  immediate  results  may  seem  disastrous.  The  ultimate 
result  will  be  a  higher  standard  of  happiness  and  improved  home 
conditions. 

Improved  Social  Status  of  Women 

The  inferior  position  of  woman,  due  to  her  economic  depend- 
ence, to  ascetic  ideals  of  marriage,  and  to  her  lack  of  intellectual 
training,  could  not  remain  unaffected  in  the  general  movement 
for  social  liberation.  The  increase  of  civil  and  individual  liberty, 
the  growing  recognition  of  equal  rights  afforded  by  the  accessi- 
bility of  the  law,  and  the  general  movement  of  popular  enlight- 
enment have  all  contributed  in  the  case  of  woman  to  afford  her 
occasion  for  demanding  her  just  share  of  human  rights  and 
privileges.  Oppression  and  dependence  were  destined  to  give 
way  before  the  force  of  principles  which  have  been  working  for 
centuries  but  are  only  now  finding  adequate  expression.  Under 
the  new  conditions  woman  is  ceasing  to  be  the  chattel  of  fathers 
and  husbands.  More  and  more  are  legal  recognition  and  protec- 
tion afforded  her  by  the  law  on  an  equality  with  men.  Ascetic 
ideals  have  been  so  far  abrogated  that  marriage  and  motherhood 
are  becoming  matters  of  choice  and  consent.  Improved  social 
and  economic  conditions  have  lightened  the  burden  of  domestic 
responsibility  and  opened  to  her  possibilities  of  a  career  for 
which  she  may  be  endowed  by  nature,  or  prepared  by  culture, 
either  within  or  without  the  confines  of  her  home.  It  is  not 
surprising,  therefore,  that  she  should  have  arrived  at  a  some- 
what greater  consciousness  of  her  own  personality ;  that  she 
should  be  wide  awake  to  the  existence  of  injustice  that  before 
had  not  been  realized. 


642  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

The  significance  of  the  effects  thus  produced  upon  the  divorce 
rate  is  as  perspicuous  as  it  is  important.  The  freedom  of  women 
is  the  deathblow  to  survivals  of  the  patriarchal  and  purchase  sys- 
tems of  marriage.  Although  many  wives  still  regard  it  as  a  sacred 
obligation  to  endure  a  species  of  martyrdom  in  marriage  out  of 
reverence  for  the  institution  or  in  the  supposed  interest  of  chil- 
dren, an  increasing  number  are  coming  instinctively  to  feel,  if 
not  clearly  to  see,  that  a  course  of  conduct  cannot  be  destructive 
of  life  and  personality  and  at  the  same  time  in  accordance  with 
the  highest  morality.  Hence  the  growing  tendency  to  revolt. 

Under  the  old  regime,  however,  the  privilege  of  divorce  was 
chiefly  the  prerogative  of  the  husband.  The  wife  had  little  redress 
for  her  wrongs.  Under  modern  conditions  the  disabilities  of  sex 
have  been  so  far  removed  that  women  have  as  free  access  as  men 
to  the  divorce  courts.  Neither  the  right  nor  the  opportunity  is, 
then,  denied  to  those  women  whose  marriage  relations  are  un- 
happy to  free  themselves  from  tyranny  or  abuse,  and  with  the 
motive  intensified  by  a  clearer  perception  of  the  wrongs  involved 
we  might  reasonably  expect  that  an  increase  of  divorces  on  the 
application  of  women  would  result.  That  this  logic  is  borne  out 
by  the  facts,  a  mere  reference  to  the  statistics  of  the  application 
for  divorce  will  reveal. 

In  this  hasty  review  of  some  of  the  chief  products  of  the  social 
transformations  due  to  progress,  our  one  purpose  has  been  clearly 
to  point  out  some  inevitable  results.  The  conditions  thus  revealed 
do  not  necessarily  force  us  to  the  conviction  that  our  marital  con- 
ditions are  increasingly  immoral.  They  do  not  prove  that  they 
are  not.  We  have  simply  tried  to  establish  the  fact,  that  the  con- 
ditions generally  surrounding  marriage  being  the  same,  there  is 
ample  ground,  partly  at  least,  to  account  for  the  continuous  rise 
of  the  divorce  rate  during  the  continuance  of  the  active  operation 
of  the  principles  of  social  progress  in  the  sphere  of  individual 
and  social  freedom.  This  can  be  alarming  only  to  the  reactionary 
who  holds  that  any  remedy  for  the  evil  of  unhappy  marriage  is 
worse  than  the  disease. 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  643 

** 

ETHICAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  READJUSTMENT 

Religious  Conservatism 

A  careful  scrutiny  of  the  present  religious  situation,  we  believe, 
will  show  that  the  real  forces  which  are  actually  producing  present 
results  are  not  those  which  manifest  themselves  in  ecclesiastical 
legislation,  or  in  reactionary  clerical  resolutions  which  represent 
the  conservative  influences  in  the  church,  but  are  those  which 
reside  in  the  nature  of  our  modern  social  and  intellectual  life, 
and  which,  although  not  so  spectacular,  are  nevertheless  produc- 
ing the  changed  religious  and  moral  ideals  of  the  present.  This 
radical  and  fundamental  change  in  the  typical  religious  thinking 
of  the  ages  is  due  to  causes  both  mental  and  material. 

The  modern  intellectual  era  may  be  said  to  date  from  1859, 
when  Darwin  published  his  Origin  of  Species.  Since  then  the 
whole  intellectual  process  has  been  transformed.  The  theory  of 
evolution  has  given  to  us  not  only  a  new  geology,  but  also  a  new 
theology.  It  has  caused  the  shifting  from  the  deductive  to  the 
inductive  method  in  the  search  for  truth  and  has  transformed 
the  whole  range  of  literary  and  scientific  studies.  It  has  demon- 
strated the  futility  of  dogmatizing  in  philosophy,  politics,  or  re- 
ligion. In  describing  the  cosmos  as  a  unity  of  which  the  various 
sciences  are  but  so  many  aspects,  Herbert  Spencer  made  a  con- 
tribution to  theology  which  should  rank  him  among  the  great 
theologians  of  his  day. 

It  is  impossible  that  an  age  so  materialistic  and  practical  as 
ours  should  be  without  influence  upon  the  concepts  of  religious 
thought  and  modes  of  expression.  Morality  is  no  longer  tran- 
scendental. It  is  "  that  unconscious  bias  which  is  growing  up  in 
human  minds  in  favor  of  those  among  our  emotions  that  are  con- 
ducive to  social  happiness."  x  Its  content  changes  with  the  nature 
of  civilization  and  the  character  of  its  social  ideals.  A  utilitarian 
age  expresses  itself  in  practical  ethics.  The  civilization  of  the 
present  is  coming  more  and  more  to  concern  itself  with  the  church 
only  so  far  as  it  ministers  to  this  practical  end. 

1  Sutherland,  The  Origin  and  Growth  of  the  Moral  Instinct,  Vol.  II,  p.  306. 


644  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

What  are  the  results  ?  Two  generations  have  witnessed  the 
passing  of  the  dogmatic  age  in  Protestant  theology.  The  heresy 
trials  of  the  past  few  decades  mark  definite  progress  in  the  eman- 
cipation of  the  church  from  the  sway  of  medieval  dogmatism. 
The  whole  structure  of  traditional  religious  conceptions  has  been 
completely  transformed.  Doctrinal  names  and  formulas  are  no 
longer  adequate  to  express  the  deeper  content  of  the  religious 
consciousness.  The  old  static,  dualistic  view  of  the  world  with 
its  creationist  theories  and  their  counterpart,  institutional  and 
theoretic  morals,  have  been  replaced  by  the  new  scientific  out- 
look with  its  evolution  concept,  its  universality  of  law,  and  its 
stringent  genetic  method.  The  church  of  to-day  is  coming  rapidly ' 
to  realize  that  neither  ritual  nor  dogma  constitutes  the  end  of  its 
existence  and  that  they  do  not  give  any  guarantee  of  its  perma- 
nency. Character,  not  creed ;  service,  not  orthodoxy,  are  the 
present  tests  of  religious  validity.  The  time-honored  landmarks 
of  religious  authority  have  been  obliterated  and  thoughtful  men 
everywhere  are  seeking  for  a  new  definition  of  authority  which 
will  not  violate  the  conscience  of  the  new  age.  In  this  pursuit 
external  sources  are  not  likely  to  yield  more  satisfactory  results 
in  the  future  than  in  the  past.  The  new  authority  arises  from 
within.  It  is  the  product  of  human  necessities  and  human  needs. 

Revised  Ethical  Concepts 

Thus  to  a  large  extent  a  religion  of  thought  has  been  replaced 
by  a  religion  of  action,  and  metaphysical  concepts  have  come  to  be 
less  esteemed  than  spirit  and  conduct.  With  this  change  in  view 
have  come  new  ethical  valuations.  The  stern  morality  of  Puritan- 
ism, based  upon  theoretical  standards,  is  giving  place  to  a  practi- 
cal morality  arising  out  of  our  changed  social  conditions.  Virtue 
no  longer  consists  in  literal  obedience  to  arbitrary  standards  set  by 
community  or  church,  but  in  conduct  consistent  with  the  highest 
good  of  the  individual  and  society.  Whereas  piety  in  marriage 
once  consisted  in  loyalty  to  the  institution  of  marriage,  and  any 
suffering  which  might  arise  was  to  be  endured  rather  than  bring 
reproach  upon  an  institution  vested  with  peculiar  divine  sanction, 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  645 

to-day  our  changed  ethical  ideas  cause  us  to  feel  that  marriage 
was  made  for  man  and  not  man  for  marriage,  and  that  the  moral 
value  of  marriage  consists  in  the  mutual  happiness  secured  to 
those  who  enter  into  it.  Where  this  condition  does  not  and  can- 
not exist,  then  the  highest  interests  of  the  individual  and  the 
state  are  conserved  only  by  the  sacrifice  of  the  fruitless  marriage*/ 
arid  the  placing  of  the  individuals  in  a  position  where  relations 
such  as  will  result  in  happiness  may  be  entered  into. 

Thus  a  new  humanitarianism  in  religion  and  ethics  has  arisen 
to  take  the  place  of  the  theoretical  standards  of  orthodoxy  of  a 
generation  ago.  It  .rests  upon  practical  morality,  and  values  insti- 
tutions in  proportion  to  the  service  they  render  in  the  formation 
of  human  character  and  the  production  of  human  welfare. 

The  present  tendencies,  we  are  persuaded,  exhibit  a  rising  and 
not  a  falling  standard  of  morals.  Because  the  point  of  emphasis 
has  shifted  many  have  been  misled.  The  social  unrest  of  our 
time  is  due,  not  to  worse  conditions,  but  to  better.  Agitations 
in  the  industrial  world  are  due,  not  to  lower  wages  or  greater 
oppression,  but  to  the  development  of  an  industrial  conscience. 
Municipal  reforms  are  the  product  of  an  ethical  awakening  in 
the  realm  of  civic  righteousness.  Political  strife  reveals  the  pres- 
ence of  purer  political  ideals.  Religious  reformations  arise  out  of 
higher  conceptions  of  divine  truth.  Precisely  in  the  same  man- 
ner our  modern  social  life  manifests  the  signs,  not  of  moral  de- 
cadence, but  of  moral  progress,  and  in  the  end  evil  is  not  likely 
to  result  from  a  movement  which  has  its  origin  in  an  ethical 
renaissance. 

From  this  point  of  view  there  is  no  necessity  for  concluding  / 
that  an  increasing  divorce  rate  is  due  to  degeneracy  and  a  de- 
cline in  social  morality.  On  the  contrary,  the  divorce  movement 
in  certain  of  its  aspects  is  the  sign  of  a  healthy  discontent  with 
present  moral  conditions  and  marks  the  struggle  toward  a  higher 
ethical  consciousness  in  regard  to  sexual  relations. 

Moral  pressure  often  adds  to  the  number  of  divorces  in  a  com- 
munity by  compelling  persons  to  secure  legal  separation  where 
actual  separation  has  already  taken  place,  in  order  that  the  new 
ties  which  have  been  formed  may  be  legalized.  It  is  likewise  true 


\ 


646  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

that  internal  moral  compulsion  not  infrequently  leads  men  and 
women  to  break  off  false  relations  and  to  seek  through  divorce\ 
and  remarriage  to  live  decently  with  natural  companions. 

Thus  the  changes  in  religious  and  ethical  concepts  have  been 
followed  by  results  which  sustain  relations  to  our  subject.  A  few 
may  be  noted  briefly. 

Intolerance  of  Evils  formerly  Endured 

In  the  sphere  of  domestic  relations  this  changed  view  results 
in  making  married  people  intolerant  of  evils  which  they  formerly 
endured.  The  potency  of  an  awakened  individual  consciousness, 
of  a  growing  intellectual  freedom,  and  of  enlarged  economic  op- 
portunity, is  further  increased  by  a  quickened  moral  perception. 
This  is  especially  effective  where  clear  moral  issues  are  involved. 
It  is  not  necessary  in  order  to  produce  a  rise  in  the  divorce  rate 
that  immorality  should  increase.  Assume  that  the  moral  status  in 
marriage  conditions  remains  the  same,  and  that  moral  perception 
is  clarified.  The  result  will  be  precisely  the  same  as  if  the  moral 
consciousness  should  remain  undisturbed  while  immorality  in- 
creased. Improved  ethical  standards  or  increased  ethical  culture 
may  therefore  become  as  efficient  disturbing  causes  as  increased 
immorality,  but  the  final  result  will  be  vastly  different. 

This  gives  significance  to  the  correlation  which  manifestly 
exists  between  the  high  ethical  development  of  the  American 
people  and  the  increase  of  the  divorce  rate.  Many  practices  which 
were  formerly  condoned  within  the  marriage  relation  have  lately 
become  obstacles  to  domestic  tranquillity.  Treatment  which  mar- 
ried women  as  a  rule  regarded  at  one  time  as  the  husband's  natural 
right  is  now  vigorously  resented.  Few  men  or  women  to-day  will 
brook  infidelity  to  the  marriage  tie,  and  the  amount  of  cruelty  and 
brutality  which  American  women  will  tolerate  is  rapidly  dimin- 
ishing. Until  the  time,  therefore,  that  moral  conduct  shall  more 
nearly  conform  to  improved  moral  ideals,  the  high  divorce  rate 
will  continue  to  be  a  most  vigorous  protest  against  the  discrepancy. 
A  few  specific  results  may  be  noted. 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  647 

An  Equal  Standard  of  Morals 

Practical  ethics  knows  no  distinction  of  sex.  Present  ethical  ' 
tendencies  are  making  effective  demand  for  an  equal  standard  of 
morals  for  both  sexes.  The  social  inferiority  of  women  in  all  ages, 
due  chiefly  to  their  economic  dependence,  is  largely  responsible 
for  the  rise  and  the  persistence  of  a  dual  standard.  Under  penalty 
of  starvation  for  one  class,  and  fear  of  a  less  luxurious  support 
in  idleness  for  another,  wives  have  often  submitted  to  a  double 
standard  of  morals  repugnant  to  all  their  finer  sensibilities  and 
sense  of  justice.  With  the  change  in  the  social  status  of  women 
the  necessity  for  the  toleration  of  such  discrimination  is  passing 
away.  Married  women  are  compelled  to-day,  neither  by  economic 
necessity  to  obtain  a  living,  nor  by  the  force  of  public  opinion 
out  of  deference  to  the  institution,  to  submit  to  indignities  that 
compromise  their  womanhood.  According  to  our  present  stand- 
ards it  is  neither  religious  nor  moral  to  maintain  a  relation  that 
involves  injustice  and  inequality.  The  woman,  therefore,  who 
rebels  at  the  tyranny  which  would  impose  upon  her  the  necessity 
of  tolerating,  under  the  guise  of  marriage  duty,  conduct  repulsive 
to  her  moral  sensibilities,  finds  vindication  and  justification  in  the 
judgment  of  an  enlightened  public  conscience. 

So  far  as  the  second  class  is  concerned,  we  are  persuaded  that 
the  number  who  value  self-respect  above  mere  convenience,  who 
prefer  to  sacrifice  social  position  rather  than  condone  moral  du- 
plicity, is  on  the  increase. 

Higher'  Ideals  of  Domestic  Happiness  - 

Ideals  compatible  with  the  nature  of  the  economic  family  of 
necessity  are  inadequate  under  our  changed  conditions.  As  the 
family  ministers  less  to  the  necessities  of  life  it  ministers  more 
to  its  amenities.  The  home  is  more  than  a  place  in  which  to  eat 
and  sleep  and  work.  It  is  a  school  of  affection  and  of  spiritual 
discipline.  It  is  a  society  for  mutual  helpfulness.  If  it  ceases  to 
be  that,  its  function  has  largely  passed  away  and  its  form  ought 
not  and  will  not  much  longer  endure.  If  agreeable  and  helpful 
companionship  cannot  be  maintained  within  the  home  there  are 


648  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

few  other  reasons  to-day  for  its  existence.  Comfortable  bachelor- 
hood is  preferable  to  infelicitous  wedlock.  Hence  a  state  of  dis- 
harmony, a  relation  deficient  in  the  higher  ethical  values,  easily 
endured  in  the  family  whose  coherence  rested  chiefly  upon  its 
economic  advantage,  may  furnish  the  strongest  motive  for  disinte- 
gration in  the  family  based  upon  mutual  happiness  and  helpfulness. 
Nor  do  we  think  the  argument  for  the  maintenance  of  the  un- 
happy family  is  strengthened  by  the  claim  often  made  in  respect  to 
the  care  of  children.  We  are  quite  persuaded  in  our  own  mind,  a 
conviction  strengthened  by  observation  and  inquiry,  that  in  the  vast 
majority  of  cases  the  children  fare  much  better  and  their  chances 
for  arriving  at  a  career  of  happiness  and  usefulness  are  greatly 
enhanced  if  given  into  the  custody  of  either  parent  than  if  com- 
pelled to  be  reared  in  the  atmosphere  of  discord  and  contention. 

The  New  Basis  of  Sexual  Morality 

Perhaps  the  chief  effect  of  the  causes  we  are  considering  is 
manifest  in  the  development  of  the  new  basis  of  sexual  morality. 
As  the  function  of  the  family  undergoes  the  transformation  from 
that  of  practical  expediency  to  the  higher  conception  of  mutual 
interest  and  affection,  uncongeniality  and  incompatibility  become 
much  more  serious  matters.  They  are  quite  as  capable  of  destroy- 
ing the  purpose  of  marriage  as  were  much  graver  difficulties  under 
the  old  regime.  Ethical  values  come  to  reside  in  those  qualities  of 
mutual  attraction  and  preference  which  are  coming  to  constitute 
the  basis  of  marriage.  Aside  from  certain  modifying  limitations 
of  social  utility  "  the  acceptance  of  a  sincere  love  between  a  man 
and  a  woman  who  would  live  together  and  be  parents,  as  the  only 
workable  and  decent  foundation  of  the  marriage  relation,"  1  is 
coming  to  be  regarded  by  society  as  the  ideal.  It  is  from  this 
point  of  view  that  we  begin  to  regard  all  marriage  based  upon 
economic  or  social  advantage  as  a  bargain  in  sex  and  a  form  of 
legalized  prostitution.  And  furthermore,  that  coercion,  whether 
on  the  part  of  church  or  state,  which  compels  one  person  to  live 
with  another  person  of  the  opposite  sex  in  repugnant  conjugal 

1  Giddings,  The  Twentieth  Century,  March,  1906,  p.  18. 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  649 

relations,  does  violence  to  all  the  higher  ethical  instincts  of  the 
soul  and  thus  comes  to  be  regarded  as  a  species  of  despotism 
incompatible  with  free  institutions. 

Thus  it  has  come  about,  not  by  conscious  planning,  but  by 
the  transformations  wrought  by  social  forces,  that  the  restraint 
formerly  imposed  by  institutional  religion  is  giving  place  to  the 
favorable  impetus  afforded  by  practical  ethics.  Popular  moral 
sentiment  which  more  than  ever  regards  the  ideal  marriage  as 
the  supreme  method  of  realizing  the  perpetuity  and  education 
of  the  race,  nevertheless  recognizes  worse  evils  than  divorce,  and 
has  come  not  only  to  approve,  but  to  encourage,  the  breaking  of 
the  conventional  marriage  tie  in  preference  to  the  crushing  of  the 
human  spirit. 

63.    THE   NEED  OF  PRINCIPLES  IN   DIVORCE   LEGISLATION1 

We  have  now  dealt  with  the  five  new  grounds  for  divorce  which 
our  colleagues  recommend  should  be  established.2  There  is  one 
distinctive  mark  on  them  all.  They  are  purely  empirical  in  the 
sense  that  they  are  tentative,  experimental,  dependent  upon  quali- 
fication and  degree.  Desertion  for  three  years  is  chosen,  but  we 
are  told  that  if  the  well-to-do  only  were  concerned  four  years 
would  have  been  recommended.  Under  pressure  of  sufficient 
hard  cases  it  might  equally  easily  become  two.  Insanity  is  to  be 
a  cause,  not  only  under  conditions  of  time,  but  also  of  the  age 
of  the  parties.  Imprisonment  under  a  commuted  death  sentence 
for,  say,  20  years  is  to  suffice,  but  not  penal  servitude  for  10  or 
1 5  years.  Cruelty  is  to  be  a  cause,  but  it  needs  to  be  defined, 
and  is  defined  in  a  set  of  words  which  may  mean  anything  from 
gross  personal  violence  to  the  continuous  exercise  of  a  sharp 

1  From  the  Minority  Report- of  the  Royal  Commission  on  Divorce  and  Matri- 
monial Causes,  by  Cosmo  I^bor,  William  Anson,  and  Lewis  T.  Dibdin.    Report  of 
the  Commission,  pp.  184-188,  London,  1912. 

2  The  Majority  Report  recommended  that  the  following  causes  be  made  legal 
grounds  for  divorce  :  adultery,  willful  desertion  for  three  years  or  more,  cruelty, 
incurable  insanity  after  five  years'  confinement,  habitual  drunkenness  found  in- 
curable after  three  years  from  first  order,  imprisonment  under  commuted  death 
sentence.  —  ED. 


650  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

tongue  or  the  habitual  indulgence  in  a  surly  temper.  Inebriety 
is  to  be  a  cause,  but  the  proposed  definition  of  it  leaves  much  to 
the  discretion  of  the  court  and  is  admitted  to  be  open  to  criticism. 
Some  witnesses  are  in  favor  of  drunkenness  being  a  ground  of 
divorce,  but  against  penal  servitude  being  so,  and  vice  versa.  It 
is  obvious  that  proposals  like  these  have  not  even  the  semblance 
of  finality.  They  are  frankly  opportunist,  designed  to  meet  what 
are  supposed  to  be  the  practical  needs  of  the  moment,  and  capa- 
ble of  expansion  in  any  direction  under  the  pressure  for  further 
facilities,  which  concession  is  almost  certain  to  produce.  They 
must  be  judged,  not  only  by  their  immediate  and  intended  results, 
but  by  their  inevitable  sequel.  If  the  State  is  to  maintain  any 
clear  attitude  as  to  divorce,  it  must  take  its  stand  upon  some 
guiding  principle.  There  is  one  principle,  and,  so  far  as  wit- 
nesses, many  of  whom  seek  to  deal  with  the  question,  have  been 
able  to  help  us,  only  one,  which  seems  to  include  the  various  pro- 
posed extensions  of  the  grounds  of  divorce.  Each  one  of  these 
is  said  to  predicate  a  state  of  circumstances  which  proves  that  the 
purposes  for  which  the  marriage  contract  was  entered  into  have 
been  defeated,  with  the  consequence  that  the  combined  life  which 
it  was  the  purpose  of  that  contract  to  establish  is  in  fact,  and 
finally,  determined.  We  suppose  that  this  is  what  is  meant  by 
our  colleagues  when  they  recommend  that  divorce  should  be  per- 
mitted for  causes  which  "  are  generally  and  properly  recognized 
as  leading  to  the  break-up  of  married  life,"  or,  as  they  elsewhere 
describe  it,  the  " de  facto  termination  of  married  life."  "\Yhat  is 
to  be  regarded  as  "  breaking  up  "  married  life  ?  Is  it  separation  ? 
The  separated  parties  may  come  together.  Is  it  drunkenness  ? 
The  drunkard  may  reform.  Is  it  penal  servitude  ?  The  prisoner 
may  return  better  and  chastened  by  punishment.  Is  it  physical 
disability  ?  Then  permanent  paralysis  of  the  body  may  frustrate 
the  objects  of  marriage  as  fully  as  paralysis  of  the  brain.  More- 
over, if  we  accept  this  principle  it  must  carry  us  much  further 
than  is  now  proposed.  The  conditions  of  the  marriage  contract 
are  not  only  that  the  parties  will  live  together  and  cohabit  with- 
out exposing  each  other  to  bodily  suffering.  They  promise  to 
love  one  another,  to  take  one  another  "  for  better  for  worse,  for 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  651 

richer  for  poorer,  in  sickness  and  in  health  "  during  their  joint 
lives ;  and  these  promises  are  as  much  of  the  essence  of  the 
matter  as  any  of  the  other  obligations  of  the  marriage  state. 
The  united  life  described  in  these  familiar  words  may  be  fatally 
wounded  and  swept  away  without  desertion,  or  cruelty,  or  insanity, 
or  inebriety,  or  imprisonment.  Who  can  judge,  for  example, 
the  effect  of  unkind  words,  or  studied  neglect  and  indifference, 
offenses  which  no  court  can  grapple  with,  but  which,  neverthe- 
less, may  be  destructive  of  real  union  ?  That  union  is  determined 
when  husband  and  wife  have  ceased  to  love  one  another.  If, 
therefore,  we  are  to  adopt  the  principle  we  have  stated,  it  follows 
that  divorce  ought  to  be  permitted  when  it  is  clear  that  the  parties 
have  irreparably  lost  affection  for  each  other,  or,  indeed,  when 
either  party  has  become  permanently  alienated  from  the  other. 

The  dilemma  that  presents  itself  is  this.  On  the  one  hand,  it 
is  in  the  highest  degree  dangerous  and  unstatesmanlike  to  deal 
with  so  momentous  a  matter  as  marriage  and  divorce  on  notions 
of  present  expediency,  without  any  governing  principle  to  guide 
us ;  on  the  other  hand,  the  only  principle  suggested  is  one  which 
requires  that  divorce  should  be  granted  on  the  mutual  consent  of 
both  parties,  and  on  proof  of  the  invincible  aversion  of  either  of 
them  for  the  other.  The  Majority  Report,  it  is  true,  does  "  not 
recommend  these  two  causes  as  grounds  of  divorce."  The  reason 
assigned  is  significant.  It  is  stated  thus  :  "  These  suggestions 
have  met  with  little  support  from  any  of  the  numerous  witnesses 
who  have  been  called  before  us  and  are  not  likely  to  meet  with 
any  substantial  support  at  the  present  day  in  England."  In  other 
words,  divorce  for  incompatibility  and  divorce  by  mutual  consent 
are  laid  aside,  not  because  they  violate  any  principle  on  which 
the  Majority  Report  is  based,  but  merely  because,  for  the  moment, 
no  effective  demand  for  them  can  be  discerned.  But  the  inevi- 
table conclusion  of  the  premises  adopted  by  our  colleagues  can- 
not be  evaded.  The  evidence  of  several  witnesses  of  distinction 
in  different  ways  shows  that  they,  at  any  rate,  accept  the  position. 
Thus,  Sir  John  Macdonell,  at  the  very  outset  of  the  inquiry,  ad- 
vocated divorce  by  mutual  consent,  provided  it  be  suitably  safe- 
guarded. Mr.  Plowden,  the  police  magistrate,  thought  that  marriage 


652  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

is  a  "purely  civil  contract"  and  that  it  would  be  "an  admirable 
thing"  if  it  "could  be  put  an  end  to  by  the  consent  of  the 
parties."  Mr.  Maurice  Hewlett,  the  well-known  novelist,  stated 
that  in  his  view  "bodily  desire  and  spiritual  intention  to  unite" 
are  the  essence  of  marriage,  and  that  "  if  a  man  cease  to  desire 
his  wife,  or  if  he  desire  another  woman,"  he  ought  to  be  entitled 
to  apply  for  a  divorce.  Miss  Llewelyn  Davies,  the  general  secre- 
tary of  the  Women's  Co-operative  Guild,  stated  the  views  of  some 
members  of  her  guild  thus  :  "  When  man  and  wife  agree  to  part, 
I  feel  it  would  be  much  better  for  the  morals  of  both  to  grant  a 
divorce.  All  our  members  are  most  emphatic  that  where  husband 
and  wife  could  not  live  happily  together  it  was  no  real  marriage, 
it  was  a  life  of  fraud  without  love.  Nothing  but  love  should  hold 
two  together  in  this  most  sacred  of  all  bonds."  The  suggested 
remedy  is  divorce.  Miss  Llewelyn  Davies  herself  was  of  opinion 
that  divorce  should  be  granted  whenever  there  was  "a  serious 
desire  on  the  part  of  either  of  the  parties  not  to  live  with  the 
other,"  and  she  explained  that  this  would  apply  to  the  case  of  a 
man  who  wanted  to  be  freed  from  his  wife  in  order  that  he  might 
live  with  another  woman.  Miss  Llewelyn  Davies  added  that  in 
saying  this  she  was  expressing  the  opinions  of  the  members  of 
the  guild  generally,  though  some  might  not  be  so  advanced.  The 
guild,  as  already  stated,  numbers  25,897  members,  respectable 
married  women  of  the  well-to-do  working  class.  Of  the  124  se- 
lected members  to  whom  Miss  Llewelyn  Davies  specially  ad- 
dressed inquires,  82  were  in  favor  of  divorce  by  mutual  consent. 
It  is  significant  that  a  considerable  number  of  the  letters  ad- 
dressed to  the  Commission  by  persons  who  wished  to  plead  for 
relief  in  their  own  cases  deal  not  with  any  matrimonial  offense, 
but  are  simply  records  of  incompatibility,  that  is  to  say,  from 
husbands  or  wives  who  have  made  a  mistake,  or  find  that  they 
are  not  suited  to  one  another,  and  claim  on  that  ground  that  they 
ought  to  be  liberated  by  law,  and  ought  to  be  allowed  to  make  a 
fresh  marriage.  The  following  is  a  typical  instance  :  "  I  married 
when  very  young  and  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago.  I 
separated  by  mutual  consent  (foolishly  perhaps).  As  the  law  at 
present  stands  neither  my  wife  nor  myself  can  obtain  a  divorce 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  653 

though  I  should  much  like  to  be  free.  There  are  many  cases  of 
this  sort,  and  if  the  law  was  only  altered  as  proposed  by  many 
that  after  a  certain  number  of  years'  separation  either  party  could 
obtain  a  divorce  it  could  injure  no  one  and  would  give  many 
much  more  happiness." 

Whether  divorce  by  mutual  consent  is  likely  to  be  adopted  eo 
nomine  is  not  the  point,  and  is  not  practically  very  important. 
One  of  the  strongest  reasons  for  not  allowing  desertion  and  cru- 
elty as  good  causes  of  divorce  is  the  ease  with  which  they  may 
be  utilized  for  the  dissolution  of  marriages  of  which  the  parties 
have  simply  grown  tired,  and  mutually  desire  to  make  an  end. 
It  will  be  remembered  that  experience  in  the  United  States  em- 
phatically confirms  the  reality  of  this  danger,  the  recognition  of 
which  has  been  a  main  factor  in  producing  the  recent  demand 
for  reform  to  which  we  have  already  referred.  The  danger  lies 
not  merely  in  the  risk  of  a  misuse  of  law  in  individual  cases, 
but  in  the  creation  of  a  habit  of  mind  in  the  people  ;  for  there 
is  evidently  a  tendency  in  the  United  States  for  husbands  and 
wives  and  their  friends  in  certain  classes  of  society  to  see  no 
discredit  in  divorce  based  on  allegations  of  cruelty  or  desertion, 
while  judges  make  no  effort  to  detect  collusion,  but  consider  it 
to  be  their  duty  to  facilitate  divorce  whenever  the  parties  are  ob- 
viously tired  of  one  another's  society.  Divorce  as  the  result  of 
mutual  arrangement  is  "looked  upon  by  people  of  respectability 
in  certain  walks  of  life  as  a  popular  and  firmly  established  insti- 
tution." We  submit  that  the  proposals  of  the  Majority  Report 
cannot  be  viewed  apart  from  the  principle  upon  which  they  are 
founded,  and  the  consequences  which  logically  follow,  and  have 
in  fact  followed,  upon  its  adoption.  Those  proposals,  if  carried 
out  by  legislation,  would  lead  the  nation  to  a  downward  incline 
on  which  it  would  be  vain  to  expect  to  be  able  to  stop  halfway. 
It  is  idle  to  imagine  that  in  a  matter  where  great  forces  of  human 
passion  must  always  be  pressing  with  all  their  might  against  what- 
ever barriers  are  set  up,  those  barriers  can  be  permanently  main- 
tained in  a  position  arbitrarily  chosen,  with  no  better  reason  to 
support  them  than  the  supposed  condition  of  public  opinion  at 
the  moment  of  their  erection.  But  if  the  principle  which  lies 


654  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

behind  the  proposals  of  the  Majority  Report  be  once  admitted, 
with  all  that  it  necessarily  implies,  the  result  would  be  practically 
to  abrogate  the  principle  of  monogamous  life-long  union. 

Would  the  adoption  of  our  colleagues'  proposals,  with  the  conse- 
quences which,  however  undesired,  must  follow,  be  for  the  general 
welfare  of  the  people  of  this  country  ?  That  is  the  question  we 
have  to  answer.  We  believe  the  preponderating  voice  of  history 
and  experience  would  answer  in  the  negative,  and  that  in  giving 
that  answer  it  would  be  supported  by  the  verdict  of  the  best  and 
wisest  of  those  in  every  age  who  have  striven  to  promote  the 
moral  advancement  and  the  happiness  of  the  human  race.  .  .  . 

There  are  reasons  at  the  present  time  which  lead  us  to  think 
that  the  State  is  called  rather  to  strengthen  than  to  relax  the 
strictness  of  its  marriage  laws.  It  cannot  be  said  that  the  natural 
tendencies  of  human  society  at  the  present  time  are  moving  in 
favor  of  an  ideal  of  family  life  based  upon  a  union  life-long  in 
its  character.  One  might  almost  say  that  the  family  is  the  funda- 
mental and  permanent  problem  of  human  society,  but  the  strength, 
coherence,  and  continuity  of  the  family  are  threatened  by  two 
counter  forces,  (a)  the  assertion  of  individual  liberty ;  (b}  the 
claims  of  logical  Socialism.  As  to  the  former  there  is  a  very 
widespread  claim  on  the  part  of  individuals  for  liberty  from  the 
restraints  of  marriage  whenever  they  become  difficult  and  irksome. 
As  to  the  latter,  logical  Socialism  is  contending  that  the  family 
stands  in  the  way  of  the  solidarity  of  the  state,  and  this  tendency 
is  operative  in  many  Continental  countries  and  in  some  of  our 
own  colonies.  Much  of  the  evidence  brought  before  us  in  the 
interests  of  what  is  called  eugenics  follows  the  same  line.  It  may 
be  added  that  within  the  family  itself,  even  in  our  own  country, 
the  same  spirit  of  reluctance  to  accept  the  discipline  of  marriage 
is  shown  in  the  growing  reluctance  to  accept  its  natural  conse- 
quences, the  production  and  rearing  of  children.  The  evidence 
in  this  respect  of  the  increasing  decline  of  the  birth  rate  in  Eng- 
land and  in  Australia  cannot  be  ignored.  To  these  influences 
tending  to  disintegrate  the  family  and  the  home  must  be  added 
the  increasing  restlessness  of  modern  life  in  all  classes  and  the 
social  effects  of  modern  industry  and  of  the  massing  of  people  in 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  655 

great  towns.  There  are  strong  tendencies  at  work  breaking  up 
the  family  life  and  the  continuous  union  of  man  and  wife,  which 
is  its  basis.  "  The  problem  of  the  family  is  not  merely  a  con- 
temporary issue  between  expediency  and  idealism,  but  is  one  ele- 
ment in  the  vastly  larger  problem  of  human  progress  and  destiny. 
This  is  the  full  scope  and  social  importance  of  the  problem  with 
which  the  Divorce  Court  and  the  Ecclesiastical  Courts  are  trying 
to  deal."  1  The  real  question  at  issue  is  the  alternative  between 
the  narrow  expediency  of  trying  to  make  the  lot  of  certain  parties 
concerned  easier  and  happier,  and  the  wider  expediency  of  strength- 
ening the  family  life  against  influences  which  are  threatening  its 
strength  and  stability.  Moreover,  the  effort  to  promote  that  nar- 
rower expediency  tends  to  defeat  the  effort  to  promote  the  wider 
expediency.  Experience  shows  that  on  the  whole  increase  of  facil- 
ities and  grounds  of  divorce  leads  to  domestic  instability.  There 
is  abundant  evidence  that  the  classes  mainly  affected  by  the  Divorce 
Court  are  becoming  less  careful  of  the  restraint  and  the  obliga- 
tions of  family  life.  This  certainly  seems  to  be  the  effect  of  di- 
vorce legislation  in  the  United  States,  and  as  we  have  already 
stated,  it  has  led  there  to  a  strong  and  increasing  reaction.  .  .  . 

There  can  be  no  question  that  hitherto  the  strength  of  English 
social  life  has  been  the  family  —  the  home.  The  evidence  is 
reassuring  that  among  the  great  bulk  of  the  people,  especially 
among  the  middle  class  and  artisans,  the  obligations  of  marriage 
are  respected,  and  home  life  is  pure  and  consistent.  There  can 
be  little  question  that  the  reason  for  this  state  of  things  is  the 
general  social  conviction  that  marriage  binds  those  who  enter  it 
for  better  or  for  worse.  It  is  a  life-long  obligation  with  all  the 
sacrifice  which  such  an  obligation  involves.  Our  contention,  there- 
fore, is  that  the  State,  in  its  own  interest,  should  maintain  and 
not  relax  the  standard  of  its  present  marriage  law.  It  is  in  the 
interest  of  the  State  to  strengthen  the  sense  of  responsibility  in 
entering  the  married  state,  and  the  willingness  of  mutual  sacrifice 
in  continuing  it.  The  provision  of  exceptions  to  the  life-long  tie 
of  marriage  must  tend  to  weaken  the  very  things  that  the  State 
desires  to  strengthen.  Will  people  be  more  careful  about  marrying 

1  F.  G.  Peabody,  Jesus  Christ  and  the  Social  Question,  p.  134.  Macmillan,  1904. 


656  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

where  there  is  a  suspicion  of  drinking  habits,  or  lunacy,  if  it  is  known 
that  when  drunkenness  or  lunacy  develops  divorce  with  permission 
to  remarry  may  be  easily  obtained  ?  Again,  will  people  be  more 
willing  to  make  mutual  sacrifices  and  allowances  if  they  know  that 
a  careful  absence  of  moderate  duration  may  set  them  free  ? 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  in  pressing  these  considerations 
we  are  either  ignoring  or  seeking  to  minimize  the  great  amount 
of  suffering  which  now  exists,  and  has  always  existed,  in  relation 
to  ill-regulated  marriages.  Weakness  and  wickedness,  selfishness 
and  ignorance  produce  their  inevitable  results  in  this  as  in  other 
departments  of  human  life.  The  tragedy  of  an  unhappy  marriage 
is  deepened  a  hundredfold  by  the  pitiful  misery  it  almost  always 
brings  on  the  children  who  suffer  for  the  sins  of  their  parents. 
But  the  fallacy  we  desire  to  deprecate  is  the  tacit  assumption  that 
these  ills  are  in  any  measure  due  to  the  lack  of  opportunity  for 
divorce.  Even  as  a  remedy  its  practical  limitations  are  obvious. 
If,  for  example,  a  wife  with  young  children  is  to  benefit  by  di- 
vorce, it  is  necessary  (i)  that  a  fresh  husband  should  be  found 
willing  to  undertake  the  burden  of  his  predecessor's  offspring, 
and  (2)  that  when  found  he  will  be  a  better  husband  than  the 
first.  But,  be  that  as  it  may,  it  is  plain  that  we  must  seek  the 
cause  of  matrimonial  trouble  at  a  much  earlier  stage  than  that 
which  has  been  reached  when  the  possibility  of  divorce  becomes 
a  practical  question.  The  causes  of  marriage  failure  are,  speaking 
generally,  the  lack  of  the  sense  of  responsibility  in  entering  the 
married  state,  and  the  lack  of  self-control,  self-sacrifice,  and  sense 
of  duty  in  continuing  it.  To  attempt  to  deal  with  these  matters 
by  multiplying  grounds  of  divorce  is  surely  to  attack  the  problem 
at  the  wrong  end.  That  the  problem  is  one  as  important  as  it  is 
difficult  no  one  will  deny.  Legislation  improving  the  social  en- 
vironment of  the  working  classes  may  do  something.  A  more 
permanently  effective  system  of  elementary  education  would  make 
young  men  and  women  far  better  equipped  for  family  life.  Pos- 
sibly some  restraint  on  the  present  freedom  of  adults  to  contract 
marriage  without  regard  to  conditions  of  health,  or  ability  to  main- 
tain a  family,  may  be  practicable,  and,  if  practicable,  would  cer- 
tainly do  something  to  diminish  the  number  of  unsuitable  and 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  657 

unhappy  marriages.  But  the  only  real  remedy  we  believe  will  be 
found  not  so  much  in  Acts  of  Parliament  as  in  such  influences 
as  can  be  exerted  to  rouse  the  conscience  and  stimulate  the  moral 
sense  of  the  nation. 

64.    UNIFORM  DIVORCE  LAW  PROPOSED  BY  THE  NATIONAL 
CONGRESS  ON  UNIFORM  DIVORCE  LAWS1 

For  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  the  advisability  of  secur- 
ing uniform  divorce  laws  throughout  the  country  has  attracted  a 
great  deal  of  attention.  According  to  the  opinion  of  all  writers, 
and  of  national  legislators,  the  Federal  Congress  cannot  deal  with 
this  matter  without  an  amendment  to  the  Constitution,  and  efforts 
have  therefore  been  concentrated  upon  securing  uniform  divorce 
laws  under  state  legislation. 

The  American  Bar  Association,  commissioners  appointed  by 
governors  of  states,  and  the  National  Congress  on  Uniform 
Divorce  Laws  have  all  dealt  with  this  subject  very  fully  and  have 
devoted  much  time  and  ingenuity  in  drafting  proposed  laws.  The 
latest,  and  perhaps  most  complete  suggested  legislation,  is  that 
recommended  by  the  National  Congress  on  Uniform  Divorce 
Laws,  which  follows. 

At  the  meeting  of  the  National  Congress  on  Uniform  Divorce 
Laws,  held  at  Philadelphia,  Pa.,  November  13  and  14,  1906,  in 
compliance  with  instructions  given  to  the  committee  on  resolu- 
tions at  the  preceding  session,  held  in  Washington,  D.  C.,  Febru- 
ary 22,  1906,  the  committee  on  resolutions  presented  a  form  of 
statute  embodying  the  principles  formulated  by  the  congress  on  the 
subject  of  annulment  of  marriage  and  divorce,  which,  after  some 
slight  amendment,  was  adopted  by  the  congress.  In  submitting 
this  form  of  statute  the  committee  on  resolutions  made  the  follow- 
ing statement,  among  other  things,  in  explanation  of  the  same  : 

It  will  be  observed  that  the  act  relating  to  annulment  of  marriage  and 
divorce,  while  complete  in  its  enumeration  of  causes  for  annulment,  for  divorce 

1  From  proceedings  of  the  Adjourned  Meeting  of  the  National  Congress  on 
Uniform  Divorce  Laws,  Harrisburg,  1907,  pp.  17-22.  Also  in  the  United  States 
Census  Bureau's  Special  Report  on  Marriage  and  Divorce,  Part  I,  pp.  271-274. 


6$ 8  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

from  the  bonds  of  matrimony,  and  for  divorce  from  bed  and  board,  and  in  its 
general  provisions  relating  to  the  legitimacy  of  children  and  the  effect  of 
foreign  decrees,  deals  only  with  such  matters  relating  to  practice  and  procedure 
as  are  necessary  to  embody  the  resolutions  of  the  congress.  In  the  first  draft 
of  the  proposed  statute  submitted  by  the  subcommittee  to  the  general  com- 
mittee at  a  meeting  held  in  St.  Paul,  Minn.,  on  September  i,  1906,  complete 
and  elaborate  provisions  were  inserted  to  cover  all  questions  relating  to  these 
important  subjects,  but  after  careful  consideration  the  committee  decided  that 
it  would  not  be  practicable  to  secure  the  passage  of  an  uniform  statute  if  these 
provisions  were  retained,  by  reason  of  the  probable  disinclination  of  many  of 
the  states  to  change  the  existing  laws  governing  procedure.  It  was  deemed 
unimportant  that  there  should  be  uniformity  on  this  subject  if  the  general 
principles  adopted  by  the  congress  were  made  effective  in  the  different 
jurisdictions. 

The  congress,  while  expressing  a  desire  that  the  causes  for  divorce  enu- 
merated in  its  resolutions  should  be  decreased  rather  than  increased,  recognizes 
the  varying  opinions  of  the  different  communities  represented  in  the  state 
legislature  as  existing  facts  and  leaves  to  each  state  to  decide  what  these  causes 
shall  be ;  the  causes  enumerated  in  the  resolutions  and  the  statute  are  now  the 
law  in  40  states  of  the  Union.  While  it  is  too  much  to  hope  in  the  present 
state  of  public  opinion  that  causes  will  be  materially  decreased  in  many  of  the 
states,  it  is  believed  that  the  principle  that  no  state  should  extend  its  jurisdic- 
tion beyond  cases  where  one  of  its  own  residents  is  a  party  will  be  universally 
recognized.  If  this  principle  is  carried  out  with  the  restrictions  relating  to 
service  provided  by  the  statute,  a  prolific  cause  of  scandal  and  injustice  will  be 
removed.  Probably  the  most  difficult  problem  that  the  committee  has  attempted 
to  solve  is  the  effect  to  be  given  to  foreign  decrees.  It  found  the  recognition 
of  the  principle  of  comity  too  firmly  imbedded  in  the  jurisprudence  of  nearly 
all  of  the  states  to  be  ignored,  and  it  was  necessary  to  recognize  the  American 
principle  of  separate  domicile  of  the  wife  for  purposes  of  divorce  as  too  firmly 
established  to  be  disturbed.  Under  these  circumstances  it  decided  to  draft  the 
general  provision  covered  by  sections  7  to  10  of  the  act  conferring  jurisdiction, 
and  then  to  require  that  full  faith  and  credit  be  given  to  all  foreign  decrees 
where  jurisdiction  was  obtained  substantially  in  conformity  with  them.  The 
adoption  of  this  act  will  tend  to  abate  the  scandal  of  migratory  divorces,  it  will 
fix  the  status  of  all  divorced  persons  on  the  same  plane  in  all  of  the  states,  and 
will  introduce  such  changes  in  the  administration  of  the  divorce  laws  as  will 
reduce  to  a  minimum  the  opportunities  for  fraud  and  collusion. 

Objection  has  been  made  to  those  provisions  of  the  act  requiring  public 
hearings,  on  the  ground  of  injury  to  public  morals,  but  the  committee  are  of 
opinion  that  the  decision  of  the  congress  is  based  upon  sound  policy,  and  the 
advantages  of  a  public  and  open  hearing  in  the  presence  of  the  court  outweigh 
any  of  the  dangers  that  have  been  suggested. 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  659 

It  will  be  found  that  no  extreme  change  will  be  made  in  any  of  the  existing 
laws  by  the  adoption  of  this  statute,  excepting  by  the  extension  to  some  of 
them  of  the  principle  of  divorce  from  bed  and  board,  the  argument  for  which 
has  been  fully  set  forth  in  the  debates  and  accepted  by  the  congress. 

Proposed  uniform  divorce  law.  —  The  form  of  bill  as  recom- 
mended by  the  congress  on  uniform  divorce  laws  is  as  follows : 

AN  ACT  REGULATING  ANNULMENT  OF  MARRIAGE  AND  DIVORCE 
CHAPTER  I.  —  JURISDICTIONAL  PROVISIONS 

Article  I. — Annulment  of  Marriage 

SECTION  I.  Causes  for  annulment. 

A  marriage  may  be  annulled  for  any  of  the  following  causes  existing  at  the 
time  of  the  marriage  : 

(a)  Incurable  physical  impotency,  or  incapacity  for  copulation,  at  the  suit  of 
either  party :  Provided,  That  the  party  making  the  application  was  ignorant 
of  such  impotency  or  incapacity  at  the  time  of  the  marriage. 

(b)  Consanguinity  or  affinity  according  to  the  table  of  degrees  established 
by  law,  at  the  suit  of  either  party ;  but  when  any  such  marriage  shall  not  have 
been  annulled  during  the  lifetime  of  the  parties  the  validity  thereof  shall  not 
be  inquired  into  after  the  death  of  either  party. 

(c)  When  such  marriage  was  contracted  while  either  of  the  parties  thereto 
had  a  husband  or  wife  living,  at  the  suit  of  either  party. 

(d)  Fraud,  force,  or  coercion,  at  the  suit  of  the  innocent  and  injured  party, 
unless  the  marriage  has  been  confirmed  by  the  acts  of  the  injured  party. 

(e)  Insanity  of  either  party,  at  the  suit  of  the  other,  or  at  the  suit  of  the 
committee  of  the  lunatic,  or  of  the  lunatic  on  regaining  reason,  unless  such 
lunatic,  after  regaining  reason,  has  confirmed  the  marriage :  Provided,  That 
where  the  party  compos  mentis  is  the  applicant,  such  party  shall  have  been 
ignorant  of  the  other's  insanity  at  the  time  of  the  marriage,  and  shall  not  have 
confirmed  it  subsequent  to  the  lunatic's  regaining  reason. 

(_/")  At  the  suit  of  the  wife  when  she  was  under  the  age  of  1 6  years  at  the 
time  of  the  marriage,  unless  such  marriage  be  confirmed  by  her  after  arriving 
at  such  age. 

(g)  At  the  suit  of  the  husband  when  he  was  under  the  age  of  18  at  the 
time  of  the  marriage,  unless  such  marriage  be  confirmed  by  him  after  arriving 
at  such  age. 

Article  II.  —  Divorce 

SECTION  2.  Kinds  of. 

Divorce  shall  be  of  two  kinds : 

(a)  Divorce  from  the  bonds  of  matrimony,  or  divorce  a  vinculo  matrimonii. 

(l>)  Divorce  from  bed  and  board,  or  divorce  a  mensa  et  thoro. 


660  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Article  III.  —  Divorce  a  vinculo 

SECTION  3.  Causes  for. 

The  causes  for  divorce  from  the  bonds  of  matrimony  shall  be : 

(a)  Adultery. 

(b)  Bigamy,   at  the  suit  of  the  innocent  and  injured  party  to  the  first 
marriage. 

(c)  Conviction  and  sentence  for  crime  by  a  competent  court  having  juris- 
diction, followed  by  a  continuous  imprisonment  for  at  least  two  years,  or  in 
the  case  of  indeterminate  sentence,  for  at  least  one  year :  Provided,  That  such 
conviction  has  been  the  result  of  trial  in  some  one  of  the  states  of  the  United 
States,  or  in  a  Federal  court,  or  in  some  one  of  the  territories,  possessions,  or 
courts  subject  to  the  jurisdiction  of  the  United  States,  or  in  some  foreign 
country   granting   a   trial    by   jury,    followed    by    an    equally   long   term    of 
imprisonment. 

(d~)  Extreme  cruelty,  on  the  part  of  either  husband  or  wife,  such  as  to 
endanger  the  life  or  health  of  the  other  party  or  to  render  cohabitation  unsafe. 

(e)  Willful  desertion  for  two  years. 

(f)  Habitual  drunkenness  for  two  years. 

Article  IV.  —  Divorce  a  mensa 

SECTION  4.    Causes  for. 

The  causes  for  divorce  from  bed  and  board  shall  be  : 

(a)  Adultery. 

(b)  Bigamy,   at  the  suit  of  the  innocent  and  injured   party  to  the  first 
marriage. 

(c)  Conviction  and  sentence  for  crime  by  a  competent  court  having  juris- 
diction, followed  by  a  continuous  imprisonment  for  at  least  two  years,  or  in 
the  case  of  indeterminate  sentence,  for  at  least  one  year :  Provided,  That  such 
conviction  has  been  the  result  of  trial  in  some  one  of  the  states  of  the  United 
States,  or  in  a  Federal  court,  or  in  some  one  of  the  territories,  possessions,  or 
courts  subject  to  the  jurisdiction  of  the  United  States,  or  in  some  foreign  country 
granting  a  trial  by  jury,  followed  by  an  equally  long  term  of  imprisonment. 

(</)  Extreme  cruelty,  on  the  part  of  either  husband  or  wife,  such  as  to 
endanger  the  life  or  health  of  the  other  party  or  to  render  cohabitation  unsafe : 
or  such  indignities,  threats,  or  acts  of  abuse,  as  to  render  the  condition  of  the 
other  party  intolerable  and  life  burdensome,  and  to  force  such  party  to  separate 
from  the  other  and  to  live  apart. 

(e)  Willful  desertion  for  two  years. 

(f)  Habitual  drunkenness  for  two  years. 

(g)  Hopeless  insanity  of  the  husband. 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  66 1 

Article  V. — Bars  to  relief 

SECTION  5.  When  decree  shall  be  denied. 

No  decree  for  divorce  shall  be  granted  if  it  appears  to  the  satisfaction  of  the 
court  that  the  suit  has  been  brought  by  collusion,  or  that  the  plaintiff  has  pro- 
cured or  connived  at  the  offense  charged,  or  has  condoned  it,  or  has  been 
guilty  of  adultery  not  condoned. 

Article  VI.  — Jurisdiction 

SECTION  6.  In  what  courts. 

The  *  *  *  court  of  this  state  shall  have  and  entertain  jurisdiction  of  all 
actions  for  annulment  of  marriage,  or  for  divorce. 

SECTION  7.  By  personal  service  in  actions  for  annulment. 

For  purposes  of  annulment  of  marriage,  jurisdiction  may  be  acquired  by 
personal  service  upon  the  defendant  within  this  state  when  either  party  is  a 
bona  fide  resident  of  this  state  at  the  time  of  the  commencement  of  the  action. 

SECTION  8.  By  personal  service  in  actions  for  divorce. 

For  purposes  of  divorce,  either  absolute  or  from  bed  and  board,  jurisdiction 
may  be  acquired  by  personal  service  upon  the  defendant  within  this  state,  under 
the  following  conditions : 

(a)  When,  at  the  time  the  cause  of  action  arose,  either  party  was  a  bona  fide 
resident  of  this  state,  and  has  continued  so  to  be  down  to  the  time  of  the 
commencement  of  the  action ;  except  that  no  action  for  absolute  divorce  shall 
be  commenced  for  any  cause  other  than  adultery  or  bigamy,  unless  one  of  the 
parties  has  been  for  the  two  years  next  preceding  the  commencement  of  the 
action  a  bona  fide  resident  of  the  state. 

(b)  When,  since  the  cause  of  action  arose,  either  party  has  become,  and  for 
at  least  two  years  next  preceding  the  commencement  of  the  action  has  contin- 
ued to  be,  a  bona  fide  resident  of  this  state :   Provided,  The  cause  of  action 
alleged  was  recognized  in  the  jurisdiction  in  which  such  party  resided  at  the 
time  the  cause  of  action  arose,  as  a  ground  for  the  same  relief  asked  for  in  the 
action  in  this  state. 

SECTION  9.   By  publication  in  actions  for  annulment. 

When  the  defendant  cannot  be  served  personally  within  this  state  and  when 
at  the  time  of  the  commencement  of  the  action  the  plaintiff  is  a  bona  fide  resi- 
dent of  this  state,  jurisdiction  for  the  purpose  of  annulment  of  marriage  may 
be  acquired  by  publication,  to  be  followed,  where  practicable,  by  service  upon 
or  notice  to  the  defendant  without  this  state,  or  by  additional  substituted 
service  upon  the  defendant  within  this  state,  as  prescribed  by  law. 

SECTION  10.   By  publication  in  actions  for  divorce. 

When  the  defendant  cannot  be  served  personally  within  this  state  and 
when  at  the  time  of  the  commencement  of  the  action  the  plaintiff  is  a  bona  fide 


662  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

resident  of  this  state,  jurisdiction  for  the  purpose  of  divorce,  whether  absolute 
or  from  bed  and  board,  may  be  acquired  by  publication,  to  be  followed,  where 
practicable,  by  service  upon  or  notice  to  the  defendant  without  this  state,  or  by 
additional  substituted  service  upon  the  defendant  within  this  state  as  prescribed 
by  law,  under  the  following  conditions  : 

(a)  When,  at  the  time  the  cause  of  action  arose,  the  plaintiff  was  a  bona  fide 
resident  of  this  state,  and  has  continued  so  to  be  down  to  the  time  of  the  com- 
mencement of  the  action ;  except  that  no  action  for  absolute  divorce  shall  be 
commenced  for  any  cause  other  than  adultery  or  bigamy,  unless  the  plaintiff 
has  been  for  the  two  years  next  preceding  the  commencement  of  the  action 
a  bona  fide  resident  of  this  state. 

(b)  When,  since  the  cause  of  action  arose,  the  plaintiff  has  become,  and  for 
at  least  two  years  next  preceding  the  commencement  of  the  action  has  contin- 
ued to  be,  a  bona  fide  resident  of  this  state :  Provided,  The  cause  of  action 
alleged  was  recognized  in  the  jurisdiction  in  which  the  plaintiff  resided  at  the 
time  the  cause  of  action  arose,  as  a  ground  for  the  same  relief  asked  for  in  the 
action  in  this  state. 

SECTION  1 1 .  Particeps  criminis  may  be  made  a  party. 

Any  one  charged  as  a  particeps  criminis  shall  be  made  a  party,  upon  his 
or  her  application  to  the  court,  subject  to  such  terms  and  conditions  as  the 
court  may  prescribe. 

SECTION  12.   Hearings. 

All  hearings  and  trials  shall  be  had  before  the  court,  and  not  before  a 
master,  referee,  or  any  other  delegated  representative ;  and  shall  in  all  cases 
be  public. 

SECTION  13.  Attorney,  appointment  of  by  court. 

In  all  uncontested  cases,  and  in  any  other  case  where  the  court  may  deem 
it  necessary  or  proper,  a  disinterested  attorney  may  be  assigned  by  the  court 
actively  to  defend  the  case. 

Article  VIII^ — Evidence 

SECTION  14.  Proof  required. 

No  decree  for  annulment  of  marriage,  or  for  divorce,  shall  be  granted 
unless  the  cause  is  shown  by  affirmative  proof  aside  from  any  admission  on 
the  part  of  the  defendant. 

SECTION  15.   Impounding  of  record  and  evidence. 

No  record  or  evidence  in  any  case  shall  be  impounded,  or  access  thereto 
refused. 

Article  IX. — Decrees 

SECTION  16.  Rule  for  decree  nisi. 

If  after  hearing  of  any  cause,  or  after  a  jury  trial  resulting  in  a  verdict  for 
the  plaintiff,  the  court  shall  be  of  opinion  that  the  plaintiff  is  entitled  to  a 

1  No  Article  VII  appears  in  the  original.  —  ED. 


THE  DIVORCE  REFORM  MOVEMENT  663 

decree  annulling  the  marriage,  or  to  a  decree  for  divorce  from  the  bonds  of 
matrimony,  a  decree  nisi  shall  be  entered. 

SECTION  1 7.  Final  decrees,  entry  of. 

A  decree  nisi  shall  become  absolute  after  the  expiration  of  one  year  from 
the  entry  thereof,  unless  appealed  from  or  proceedings  for  review  are  pending, 
or  the  court  before  the  expiration  of  said  period  for  sufficient  cause,  upon  its 
own  motion,  or  upon  the  application  of  any  party,  whether  interested  or  not, 
otherwise  orders ;  and  at  the  expiration  of  one  year  such  final  and  absolute 
decree  shall  then  be  entered,  upon  application  to  the  court  by  the  plaintiff, 
unless  prior  to  that  time  cause  be  shown  to  the  contrary. 

SECTION  1 8.  Decree  a  mensa,  terms  of. 

In  all  cases  of  divorce  from  bed  and  board  for  any  of  the  causes  specified 
in  section  4  of  this  act,  the  court  may  decree  a  separation  forever  thereafter, 
or  for  a  limited  time,  as  shall  seem  just  and  reasonable,  with  a  provision  that 
in  case  of  a  reconciliation  at  any  time  thereafter,  the  parties  may  apply  for  a 
revocation  or  suspension  of  the  decree ;  and  upon  such  application  the  court 
shall  make  such  order  as  may  be  just  and  reasonable. 

SECTION  19.  Former  name  of  wife. 

The  court  upon  granting  a  divorce  from  the  bonds  of  matrimony  to  a  woman 
may  allow  her  to  resume  her  maiden  name,  or  the  name  of  a  former  deceased 
husband. 

CHAPTER  III.1 — GENERAL  PROVISION 
Article  XI.2  —  Children 

SECTION  20.  Legitimacy  of. 

(a)  In  an  action  brought  by  the  wife,  the  legitimacy  of  any  child  born  or 
begotten  before  the  commencement  of  the  action  shall  not  be  affected. 

(b~)  In  an  action  brought  by  the  husband,  the  legitimacy  of  any  child  born 
or  begotten  before  the  commission  of  the  offense  charged  shall  not  be  affected  ; 
but  the  legitimacy  of  any  other  child  of  the  wife  may  be  determined  as  one  of 
the  issues  of  the  action.  All  children  begotten  before  the  commencement  of 
the  action  shall  be  presumed  to  be  legitimate. 

Article  XII. — Foreign  decrees 

SECTION  21.  Effect  of. 

Full  faith  and  credit  shall  be  given  in  all  the  courts  of  this  state  to  a  decree 
of  annulment  of  marriage  or  divorce  by  a  court  of  competent  jurisdiction  in 
another  state,  territory,  or  possession  of  the  United  States  when  the  jurisdic- 
tion of  such  court  was  obtained  in  the  manner  and  in  substantial  conformity 

1  No  Chapter  II  appears  in  the  original. —  ED. 

2  Article  X  of  the  original  draft  of  the  proposed  Act  was  not  adopted  by  the 
Congress.  —  ED. 


664  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

with  the  conditions  prescribed  in  sections  7,  8,  9,  and  10  of  this  act.  Nothing 
herein  contained  shall  be  construed  to  limit  the  power  of  any  court  to  give 
such  effect  to  a  decree  of  annulment  or  divorce  by  a  court  of  a  foreign  country 
as  may  be  justified  by  the  rules  of  international  comity  :  Provided,  That  if  any 
inhabitant  of  this  state  shall  go  into  another  state,  territory,  or  country  in 
order  to  obtain  a  decree  of  divorce  for  a  cause  which  occurred  while  the  parties 
reside  in  this  state,  or  for  a  cause  which  is  not  ground  for  divorce  under  the 
laws  of  this  state,  a  decree  so  obtained  shall  be  of  no  force  or  effect  in  this  state. 

REFERENCES 

ADLER,  FELIX,  Marriage  and  Divorce,  1905. 

HOLMES,  J.  H.,  Marriage  and  Divorce,  1913. 

*HOWARD,  G.  E.,  History  of  Matrimonial  Institutions  (3  vols.),  1904.  See 
especially  Vol.  Ill,  chap,  xviii. 

*HO\VARD,  G.  E.,  DIKE,  S.  W.,  and  others,  "  Is  the  Freer  Granting  of  Di- 
vorce an  Evil?"  American  Journal  of  Sociology,  May,  1909.  Also  in 
Publications  of  the  American  Sociological  Society,  Vol.  Ill,  1909. 

*LICHTEXBERGER,  J.  P.,  Divorce,  a  Study  in  Social  Causation,  Columbia 
University  Studies  in  History,  Economics,  and  Public  Laiv,  Vol.  XXV, 
No.  3,  1909. 

PEABODY,  F.  G.,  Jesus  Christ  and  the  Social  Question  (1900),  chap.  iii. 

POST,  L.  F.,  The  Ethics  of  Divorce,  1906. 

RUSSELL,  EARL,  Divorce,  1912.    (Discussion  of  the  problem  in  England.) 

SHAW,  BERNARD,  On  Getting  Married  (the  Preface),  1908. 

SPENCER,  A.  G.,  Woman's  Share  in  Social  Culture  (1913),  chap.  ix. 

WILLCOX,  W.  F.,  The  Divorce  Problem,  a  Study  in  Statistics,  Columbia  l>ni- 
versily  Studies  in  History,  Economics,  and  Public  Laiv,  Vol.  I,  2d  edition, 
1897. 

*Catholic  Encyclopedia,  Vol.  V,  pp.  54-69;  Vol.  IX,  pp.  691-707. 

*United  States  Census  Bureau,  Bulletin  No.  96,  Marriage  and  Divorce,  1908. 

United  States  Census  Bureau,  Special  Report  on  Marriage  and  Divorce 
(2  vols.),  1908-1909. 

*Starred  references  are  those  worthy  of  first  attention  in  additional  reading. 


BOOK  V  . 

THE  NEGRO  PROBLEM  IN  THE  UNITED 

STATES 

CHAPTER  XVI 

THE  PROBLEM 

The  influence  of  the  Reconstruction  era  on  the  psychology  of  the  South,  665.  — 
The  South  and  the  negro,  677.  —  Complexity  of  the  problem,  679.  —  National  char- 
acter of  the  problem,  680.  —  Social  changes  wrought  by  emancipation,  683.  —  Up- 
ward and  downward  tendencies,  683.  —  Inadequacy  of  white  people's  knowledge 
of  negro  life,  685.  —  The  criminal  negro,  689.  —  Opportunity  in  the  South  and  in 
the  North,  691.  —  Political  issues,  694. —  Senator  Vardaman's  views,  704.  —  The 
negro  in  Haiti  and  San  Domingo,  705.  —  Negro  inferiority,  709 

65.    THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    INFLUENCES    OF    RECON- 
STRUCTION l 

THE  RECONSTRUCTION  BACKGROUND 

To  take  the  ground  that  all  the  complicated  phases  of  the 
modern  problem  of  race  relations  are  attributable  to  Reconstruc- 
tion, or  to  any  other  one  line  of  policy,  anywhere  or  at  any  time, 
would  be  to  assume  a  wholly  untenable  position.  The  simpler 
the  form  of  relation  between  two  different  races  the  simpler  will 
be  the  problems  between  the  two ;  the  more  complex  the  relation 
the  more  complex  its  problems.  The  simplest  relation  that  could 
exist  between  the  white  and  negro  races,  in  the  mass,  was  that 
of  the  physical  control  of  one  by  the  other.  The  most  complex 
relations  that  can  exist  between  the  two,  or  between  any  racial 

1  By  Alfred  Holt  Stone.  Adapted  from  Studies  in  the  American  Race  Prob- 
lem, pp.  252-272,  275,  276,  Doubleday,  Page  &  Company,  New  York,  1908. 

665 


666  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

groups,  are  those  predicated  upon  a  condition  of  actual  or  tech- 
nical equality.  And  the  complications  to  which  this  relation  gives 
rise  will  be  difficult  and  severe  in  proportion  to  the  degree  of 
artificiality  which  characterizes  the  equality  sought  to  be  estab- 
lished. The  greater  the  natural  differences  in  the  way,  the  more 
complicated  and  serious  will  be  the  problems  incident  to  the  arti- 
ficially created  relations.  The  mere  grant  of  immediate  freedom 
to  a  large  mass  of  negro  slaves  would  inevitably  have  produced 
its  own  racial  problems.  Every  step  taken  toward  the  removal 
of  the  further  barriers  between  white  and  black  multiplied  such 
problems  and  created  new  ones.  The  only  escape  from  a  cata- 
clysm lay  in  allowing  sufficient  time  to  elapse  between  the  re- 
removal  of  one  barrier  after  another  for  the  races  to  adjust  their 
relations  to  the  change  along  normal  lines.  But  this  would  not 
have  been  "  Reconstruction."  That  was  a  process  the  logical 
dogma  of  which  was  the  proposition  that  nature  has  erected  no 
barrier  to  racial  equality  which  legislation  cannot  remove. 

The  only  defense  which  can  be  attempted  of  the  policy  of 
giving  the  negro  the  ballot  in  1867,  and  of  confirming  the  grant 
in  1870,  is  that  it  was  necessary  to  enable  him  to  "  protect "  him- 
self. The  very  thought  suggests  the  idea  of  a  conflict  between 
former  master  and  slave.  Apparently  it  has  been  impossible  for 
politicians  and  publicists  to  comprehend  the  existence  of  the  re- 
lation of  master  and  slave  without  a  resulting  state  of  inconceiv- 
able hostility  between  the  individuals  thus  associated.  We  are 
prone  to  interpret  the  things  which  affect  other  people  in  terms 
of  our  own  consciousness.  This  is  the  basic  error  of  many  people 
who  discuss  the  problems  before  us.  They  would  be  miserable 
and  unutterably  wretched  in  a  state  of  "  bondage,"  ergo,  the 
negro  was  miserable  and  wretched.  The  mistaken  policy  of  Re- 
construction was  but  the  practical  application  of  a  mistaken  theory 
of  race  relations  under  slavery.1  Many  thoughtful  men  were 
amazed  that  the  negroes  did  not  massacre  their  masters  at  the 
first  opportunity.  .  .  .  That  none  of  these  things  occurred  has 

1  I  am  here  eliminating  from  consideration  all  the  baser  motives  of  that  policy 
and  am  reviewing  only  that  which  honestly,  even  though  mistakenly,  sought  the 
welfare  of  the  negro. 


THE  PROBLEM  667 

been  ascribed  to  the  "forgiving  and  benignant  gentleness"  of 
the  negro.  It  is  only  occasionally  that  someone  sees  deeply 
enough  to  realize  the  whole  truth. 

We  need  not  take  too  literally  the  pleasing  romances  which 
deal  with  Southern  ante-bellum  life,  in  order  to  realize  the  fact 
that  there  was  much  in  the  relations  between  the  races  under  the 
old  regime  which  was,  and  is,  incomprehensible  to  the  mind  of 
anyone  to  whom  slavery  was  merely  the  sum  of  all  villainies.  On 
the  one  hand  we  have  balls  and  chains,  auction  blocks  and  weep- 
ing children,  bloodhounds  and  swamps,  the  slave  driver  and  the 
lash  — all  the  accessories  and  paraphernalia  necessary  to  equip  a 
Southern  plantation  in  a  New  England  novel.  On  the  other,  we 
have  the  ,big  house  and  its  gentle  mistress,  the  kind  and  indul- 
gent master,  the  black  mammy,  the  enduring  friendship  between 
the  races,  the  Christmas  frolics,  and  the  various  other  things 
which  live  in  the  picture  painted  upon  another  canvas.  We  need 
not  be  deceived  on  either  side.  The  truth  will  usually  be  found 
between  any  two  given  extremes. 

Slavery  was  neither  all  the  one  nor  all  the  other.  It  was  essen- 
tially a  human  institution,  and  as  such  was  no  better  and  no 
worse  than  the  individuals  with  whose  lives  it  was  inseparably 
associated.  It  was  mild  or  harsh  as  the  individual  was  mild  or 
harsh.  .  .  .  There  was  a  great  potential  force  for  usefulness  in 
adjusting  succeeding  relations  which  was  bound  up  in  the  ties 
which  existed  between  the  higher  type  of  master  and  the  higher 
type  of  slave.  We  are  apt  to  miss  this  truth,  through  dwelling 
on  the  limited  number  of  the  higher  domestic  class  as  compared 
with  the  whole.  We  fail  to  realize  that  it  was  this  higher  class, 
in  the  main  mulatto  types,  who  in  such  large  measure  constituted 
the  "  negro  "  leaders  of  the  Reconstruction  era.  It  was  through 
them  that  a  great  beneficent  force  might  have  been  exerted  upon 
the  mass,  just  as  it  was  through  them  that  this  force  was  in  fact 
too  largely  exerted  for  evil.  Such  men  as  Hampton,  Lamar,  Hill, 
and  Gordon  on  the  one  side,  and  Revels,  Bruce,  and  many  more 
on  the  other,  both  bond  and  free,  might  not  have  been  able  en- 
tirely to  control  their  respective  constituencies.  It  is  morally  cer- 
tain, however,  that  acting  together,  as  under  normally  developed 


668  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

conditions  they  would  have  acted,  they  could  and  would  have  brought 
to  bear  a  powerful  pressure  for  good.  That  the  normal  relations 
between  these  men  were  all  too  nearly  destroyed  is  one  thing  for 
which  Reconstruction  was  immediately  responsible.  We  have 
abundant  testimony  as  to  what  in  very  large  degree  such  relations 
were  under  slavery,  and  much  from  people  of  color  themselves.  .  .  . 
Of  all  the  miserable  heritage  of  Reconstruction,  probably  the 
most  harmful,  all  things  considered,  was  the  bequest  to  this  gen- 
eration of  the  foundation  and  beginning  of  a  peculiarly  uncom- 
promising, indiscriminating  color  line,  one  such  as  was  unknown 
in  older  days.  There  is  no  other  element  in  the  present  situa- 
tion so  pregnant  with  hurtful  possibilities,  no  factor  the  inexorable 
operations  of  which  are  so  difficult  to  escape.  It  is  hard  for  a 
Southern  man  fully  to  understand  the  attitude  of  mind  which 
persistently  holds  the  belief  that  such  relations  as  we  have  just 
suggested  did  not  exist  under  slavery,  or  at  best  were  rare  and 
curious  phenomena.  That  this  was  a  fundamental  tenet  with 
thousands  of  honest  and  intelligent  people  is  not  a  matter  of 
debate.  It  is  testified  to  by  innumerable  specific  declarations,  by 
countless  acts,  by  a  policy  too  definitely  based  upon  the  theory  to 
admit  of  doubt  as  to  its  controlling  force.  There  was  also  always 
in  evidence  the  corollary  to  this  idea,  a  proposition  equally  as 
logical  in  its  ignorance  of  fact.  This  was  that,  conversely,  there 
must  be,  from  the  very  nature  and  constitution  of  the  Southern 
institution,  a  bond  of  unity  and  sympathy  between  the  "  oppressed 
negro  slave  "  and  the  ''  oppressed  non-slaveholding  white  man." 
To  the  Northern  view  they  were  the  sharers  of  a  common  fate, 
and,  upon  the  logic  of  well-reasoned  human  conduct,  they  could 
be  counted  upon  to  make  a  common  cause  against  their  common 
oppressor.  The  great  war  governor  of  Massachusetts  tells  his 
people  in  1865  to  "  remember  that  the  poor  oppressed  democracy 
of  Georgia  and  the  Carolinas  are  their  brethren."  He  warns 
against  letting  "  sentimental  politics  surrender  either  them,  or 
the  black  man,  with  whom  they  have  shared  the  voiceless  woe  of 
his  servitude  ...  to  the  possibilities  of  any  reactionary  theory."  l 

1  Governor  John  A.  Andrew's  address  to  Massachusetts  Legislature,  Jan.  6, 
1865,  Massachusetts  Senate  Documents,  i,  pp.  96,  97. 


THE  PROBLEM  669 

Governor  Andrew  almost  completely  reversed  his  own  attitude 
toward  Reconstruction,  but  the  logic  of  his  counsel  lived.  Though 
he  would  have  had  it  otherwise,  the  policy  of  that  period  was  not 
addressed  to  the  former  slave  owner,  and  it  met  with  no  response 
from  those  who  were  said  to  have  "  shared  the  voiceless  woe  " 
of  the  former  slave.  By  no  people  in  the  South  was  the  equaliz- 
ing program  of  Congress  more  bitterly  resented  and  opposed. 
One  inevitable  result  of  that  program  was  to  estrange  from  the 
negro  those  men  the  habit  of  whose  lives  was  that  of  personal 
kindliness  to  the  race.  There  was  created  for  the  first  time  a 
partial  identity  of  abstract  attitude  toward  the  negro  between  the 
slaveholder  and  those  whom  the  North  vainly  imagined  were  the 
only  logical  friends  of  the  slave.  But  one  division  was  permitted 
by  the  policy  which  allied  the  negro  with  his  new-found  North- 
ern friends  and  taught  him  to  regard  his  master  as  his  enemy. 
Upon  one  side  of  this  dividing  line  were  the  negro  and  the 
carpetbagger ;  upon  the  other  were  the  white  people  of  the  South, 
save  the  scalawag,  without  regard  to  previous  party  affiliation  or 
other  association,  without  question  as  to  natural  identity  of  inter- 
ests or  normal  community  of  thought.  The  odium  thus  attached 
to  political  association  between  whites  and  blacks  not  only  perpet- 
uated itself  in  the  popular  mind,  but  communicated  its  taint  to 
all  other  forms  of  public  association  as  well.  The  community  of 
interest  between  master  and  slave  was  destroyed,  and  hostility 
was  the  bitter  fruit  of  the  attempt  to  create  a  hopeless  and  sense- 
less "  equality  "  between  the  two. 

But  the  old  relations  were  too  strong  to  be  wholly  broken  down 
by  even  the  iron  policy  of  Reconstruction.  To  this  day  there  yet 
survives  more  of  ante-bellum  racial  kindliness  than  the  outside 
world,  with  its  ignorant  wisdom,  is  able  to  comprehend.  But  what 
remained  was  peculiarly  personal.  In  all  public  affairs,  wherever 
there  was  an  open  alignment  of  men,  white  men  stood  by  white 
men,  and  the  negro  stood  by  the  stranger  and  the  renegade. 
All  public  support  of  the  negro  became  measurably  identified 
with  the  odium  of  this  political  association,  and  the  negro  suffers 
the  consequences.  In  any  matter  which  becomes  a  question  of 
race,  in  any  matter  wherein  the  white  man  is  bound  by  public 


670  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

opinion  to  openly  espouse  one  side  or  the  other,  as  between  that 
which  is  historically  and  sentimentally  identified  with  the  cause 
of  his  own  people,  and  that  which  is  identified  with  those  who 
were  their  enemies  in  peace,  there  is  little  doubt  as  to  where  the 
decision  will  lie.  From  the  warning  of  Councill  we  may  read  that 
the  negro  in  large  part  has  himself  to  blame  —  himself  and  those 
who  were  the  real  creators  of  the  Southern  color  line. 

The  man  who  does  not  know  may  catch  some  faint  hint  of  the 
significance  of  this  line  as  the  colored  man  sees  it,  if  he  will  listen 
to  Dr.  Du  Bois.  He  says  : 

It  is  usually  true  that  the  very  representatives  of  the  two  races  who  for 
mutual  benefit  and  the  welfare  of  the  land  ought  to  be  in  complete  under- 
standing and  sympathy  are  so  far  strangers  that  one  side  thinks  all  whites  are 
narrow  and  prejudiced  and  the  other  thinks  educated  negroes  dangerous  and 
insolent.  Moreover,  in  a  land  where  the  tyranny  of  public  opinion  and  the 
intolerance  of  criticism  are  for  obvious  historical  reasons  so  strong  as  in  the 
South,  such  a  situation  is  extremely  difficult  to  correct.  The  white  man  as  well 
as  the  negro  is  bound  and  tied  by  the  color  line,  and  many  a  scheme  of  friendli- 
ness and  philanthropy,  of  broad-minded  sympathy,  and  generous  fellowship 
between  the  two  has  dropped  still-born  because  some  busybody  has  forced  the 
color  question  to  the  front  and  brought  the  tremendous  force  of  unwritten  law 
against  the  innovators.1 

For  a  student  of  race  relations,  seeking  light  upon  the  results 
of  the  artificial  adjustment  which  followed  the  Civil  War,  rather 
than  upon  the  barren  facts  of  such  adjustment,  most  of  the  liter- 
ature which  deals  with  the  period  possesses  little  value.  It  is  of 
course  worth  while  to  know  with  accuracy  just  what  the  "  Black 
and  Tan  "  legislatures  of  Southern  states  spent  on  their  printing 
bills  and  stationery  accounts.  The  truth  should  of  course  be 
established  as  to  the  public  debts  which  they  did  or  did  not 
create.  Also  by  all  means  let  them  be  given  credit  for  the  good 
they  did,  as  well  as  the  evil,  and  for  all  of  the  former  which 
research  can  bring  to  light. 

But  this  was  but  a  comparatively  small  part  of  Reconstruction, 
as  that  term  was  seared  into  the  minds  and  hearts  of  Southern 
people.  Tradition  may  not  be  history,  but  if  we  would  interpret 

1  The  Relation  of  the  Negroes  to  the  Whites  in  the  South,  Annals  of  the 
American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social  Science-,  July,  1901,  pp.  137,  138. 


THE  PROBLEM  671 

the  meaning  and  significance  of  the  great  epoch-marking  events 
in  the  life  of  a  people,  we  must  take  account  of  the  one  as  well  as 
of  the  other.  History  was  handed  down  by  word  of  mouth  before 
it  was  recorded  with  the  pen.  For  the  light  we  need  it  is  idle 
to  point  out  with  scientific  exactness  that  in  actual  fact  technical 
"  Reconstruction  "  lasted  just  so  many  months  and  weeks  and  days. 

What,  then,  is  this  thing  which  we  call  "Reconstruction"? 
In  the  South  it  is  that  period  of  misery  which  covered  the  decade 
or  more  between  1865  and  1875  or  1880,  and  measured  the  time 
during  which  the  control  of  their  domestic  affairs  was  lost  and 
regained  by  Southern  white  men.  It  is  in  popular  comprehension 
the  more  or  less  clearly  defined,  but  always  darker,  part  of  the 
bitter  twenty  years  after  1860,  during  which  the  South  was  the 
scene  of  war,  rehabilitation,  and  the  undoing  of  the  latter  process. 
It  was  the  period  during  which,  amid  the  wreck  of  its  old  order 
and  in  the  midst  of  its  poverty,  it  was  delivered  up,  as  President 
Hyde,  of  Bowdoin,  puts  it,  in  the  name  of  racial  equality  to 
political  and  social  chaos.  And  these  people  trod  the  wine  press 
alone.  They  were  pilloried  in  public  print,  "  investigated  "  time 
after  time,  almost  as  a  holiday  task,  and  "reported  on  "  by  com- 
mittees of  hostile  congresses.  They  were  cartooned  by  the  pen 
of  Thomas  Nast,  their  every  fault  was  hunted  out  and  magnified 
and  set  upon  a  hill,  for  all  the  world  to  gaze  at  as  typical  of  "  a 
barbarous  people."  Their  misfortunes  were  paraded  as  the  well- 
earned  fruit  of  treason.  They  were  branded  and  set  apart  in 
outer  darkness,  to  work  out  their  salvation  as  best  they  might, 
under  a  handicap  such  as  has  not  been  imposed  upon  any  other 
group  of  English-speaking  people  in  modern  times. 

We  are  faced  with  the  simple  but  pregnant  fact  that  since 
1865  the  Southern  people  have  constituted  what  is  probably  the 
most  doggedly  determined  and  compact  body  of  men  this  country 
has  known.  Racial  solidarity  has  become  the  fixed  and  natural 
habit  of  their  thought  and  lives.  People  running  well  into  the 
millions  in  numbers  and  occupying  a  vast  expanse  of  territory, 
do  not,  cannot,  maintain  such  an  attitude  through  an  unbroken 
reach  of  more  than  forty  years  without  the  existence  of  some 
great  fundamental  reason.  It  is  folly  to  suppose  that  this  could 


672  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

be  kept  up  as  a  result  of  "senseless  race  prejudice."  We  must 
account  for  conditions  of  such  significance,  when  we  write  wise 
monographs  on  the  "  negro  question  "  or  learnedly  descant  upon 
the  best  methods  of  spreading  education  for  the  developing  of 
"backward  Southern  civilization."  Much  as  we  might  like  to 
forget  this  period  of  our  history,  it  cannot  be  ignored.  The  race 
problem  is  a  broad  one,  and  these  conditions  form  one  of  its 
essential  parts  —  the  forbidding  background  of  the  recent  past, 
upon  which  the  picture  of  the  present  must  be  thrown  if  all  its 
lights  and  shadows  would  be  brought  to  view. 

THE  ASSOCIATION  OF  IDEAS 

It  is  a  far  cry  from  Southern  Reconstruction  to  the  present 
peace-loving  chaplain  of  the  United  States  Senate.  Yet  Dr.  Hale 
gives  us  a  clue  which  should  help  us  to  understand  how  the  stress 
of  the  negro's  first  days  of  freedom  is  naturally  associated  with 
that  of  his  later  life.  In  one  of  his  "Tarry  at  Home  Travels" 
the  venerable  New  Englander  indulges  the  following  reflective 
passage  :  "  The  French  always  brought  Indians  with  them.  And 
you  may  charge  it  to  the  French  religion  or  not,  as  you  choose, 
but  the  savage  warfare  which  they  carried  on  under  French  direc- 
tion was  of  the  most  horrible  kind.  If  anybody  cares,  it  is  to  be 
observed  that  the  hatred  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  which 
existed  formerly  in  New  Fngland  was  due  to  the  memory  that 
the  savage  raids  of  the  eighteenth  century  were  in  all  instances 
mixed  up  with  French  invasion,  and  were  ascribed  by  the  sufferers, 
more  or  less,  to  the  machinations  of  Latin  priests."  1 

One  of  the  simplest  psychological  processes  of  the  human 
mind  is  that  of  the  association  of  ideas.  And,  "  if  anybody  cares," 
it  operates  as  effectively  in  the  South  in  associating  the  negro  in 
politics  with  the  odium  of  a  hundred  acts  of  Reconstruction  days, 
which  apparently  lie  beyond  the  reach  of  history,  as  it  did  in 
New  England  in  associating  Catholicism  with  Indian  massacres. 
And  we  might  call  on  psychology  to  help  us  interpret  more  than 
one  other  phenomenon  which  seems  to  puzzle  the  race-problem 

1  Outlook,  May  6,  1905,  p.  76. 


THE  PROBLEM  673 

specialist.  The  writer  has  a  friend,  born  and  reared  and  living 
in  a  Northern  state,  whose  family  was  "expelled"  from  Haiti  at 
the  time  of  its  slave  insurrection.  His  people  suffered  unspeak- 
able barbarities  in  the  process.  Whether  or  not  family  tradition 
has  magnified  those  sufferings  might  interest  the  historian  bent 
upon  an  exclusive  search  for  time-worn  actualities.  It  is  not  of  so 
much  concern  to  our  present  purpose  as  is  the  knowledge  of  the  very 
real  and  existing  fact  that  this  man  can  with  difficulty  to-day  tol- 
erate a  negro  in  his  presence.  Yet  he  is  a  kindly  man  and  a  just. 
A  picture  comes  to  my  mind  of  a  gentle,  almost  womanly 
tender  old  man,  telling  in  the  monotone  of  age,  around  a  winter's 
fireside,  some  of  his  Reconstruction  experiences  —  the  kind  which 
only  Southern  children  have  heard  from  reminiscent  lips,  the 
kind  which  find  no  place  in  Reconstruction  histories.  He  had 
surrendered  in  good  faith  at  Appomattox,  and  had  found  his  way 
back  to  the  place  he  had  once  called  home,  thinking  in  his  heart 
that  war  and  invasion  were  really  over,  now  that  the  fighting  was 
done.  He  told  of  the  humiliations  and  heartburnings  and  bitter 
things  which  followed  the  second  invasion.  And  of  how  mild 
and  commonplace  by  comparison  became  the  incidents  of  real 
war,  in  which  he  had  been  given  a  fighting  man's  chance.  He 
told  of  how  he  had  been  arrested  by  a  negro  bureau  officer  upon 
some  trivial  charge.  He  was  a  peaceable  and  law-loving  man,  and 
accompanied  his  custodian  without  hesitation  or  suspicion.  The 
bureau  headquarters  were  some  distance  away  and  the  night  was 
bitter  cold.  Darkness  coming  on,  the  officer  suggested  stopping 
at  a  negro  cabin  for  the  night.  He  demurred,  but  finally  consented. 
While  standing  in  front  of  the  fire  he  was  suddenly  seized  by  the 
officer  and  his  negro  host.  He  was  tied  hand  and  foot  and  taken 
to  the  stable  lot.  Here  a  rail  fence  was  raised  and  his  head  thrust 
under  it,  his  neck  resting  on  the  bottom  rail.  In  this  position  he 
was  left  during  the  long  winter  night,  his  face  beat  upon  by  driving 
sleet,  his  warworn  body  racked  with  pain.  That  was  a  long  while 
ago,  and  he  all  but  smiled  as  he  told  the  story  —  a  queer,  non- 
humorous  sort  of  smile.  I  dare  say  it  would  be  almost  a  useless 
waste  of  time  to  tell  him  and  his  family  and  his  country  neighbors 
that  the  so-called  "  horrors  of  Reconstruction  "  were  in  fact,  upon 


674  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  latest  scientific  analysis,  found  and  actually  demonstrated  to 
have  been  mere  creations  of  the  overwrought  Southern  mind. 

And  how  many  such  "  trivial  incidents,"  as  the  great  world's 
history  is  measured,  incidents  long  since  forgotten  elsewhere,  were 
necessary  to  create  a  more  or  less  fixed  and  definite  mental  atti- 
tude toward  the  period  with  which  they  are  inseparably  associated  ? 
Scattered  throughout  all  this  region  there  were  enough  and  to 
spare.  Each  county,  each  little  community  or  isolated  group,  has 
in  its  own  simple  way  its  own  tales  to  tell  to  its  children  —  even 
though  they  may  not  be  recounted  in  the  books  from  which  we 
learn  the  history  of  that  time. 

If  you  live  in  a  part  of  the  world  where  present  environment 
makes  it  possible  to  do  so,  attempt  to  frame  for  yourself  a  picture 
of  the  horrors  through  which  the  white  people  of  Haiti  lived 
during  the  inception  of  a  government  founded  upon  a  massacre 
and  perpetuated  by  assassination.  Then  read  Wendell  Phillips's 
apostrophe  to  Toussaint  L'Ouverture,  or  Harriet  Martineau's 
"The  Hour  and  the  Man."  Picture  to  yourself  the  mental  suf- 
fering inflicted  by  such  experiences  as  I  have  described  above. 
Estimate  the  abiding  effect  upon  the  communities  in  which  they 
occurred,  and  you  may  then  begin  to  appreciate  how  far  such  an 
observation  as  the  following  falls  short  of  fathoming  the  depth 
of  the  real  relation  between  Reconstruction  and  present  condi- 
tions :  "  Now  ensued  the  trial  of  negro  suffrage,  and  most 
Southern  writers  on  the  subject  of  the  present  relations  of  the 
negroes  and  whites  trace  all  the  trouble  back  to  those  unholy  acts 
of  Congress  and  Constitutional  Amendments.  Every  Southern 
child  as  he  grows  up  becomes  possessed  of  a  fixed  belief  that 
from  1865  to  about  1875  the  South  was  governed  by  an  un- 
righteous combination  of  negroes  with  a  few  '  scalawags  '  or  on- 
the-soil  Republicans,  and  'carpetbaggers,'  or  Northern  political 
adventurers.  These  things  are  within  the  memory  of  thousands 
of  living  men  and  women,  and  yet  how  warped  already  is  the 
popular  impression  I"1 

1  Albert  Rushnell  Hart,  "  The  Realities  of  Negro  Suffrage,"  p.  154,  in  Proceed- 
ings of  the  American  Political  Science  Association,  second  annual  meeting, 
Baltimore,  1905. 


THE  PROBLEM  675 

Any  postgraduate  man  at  Harvard,  Columbia,  or  Johns  Hop- 
kins might  easily  submit  as  a  thesis  a  more  "  accurate  "  account 
of  Reconstruction  than  would  probably  be  written  by  anyone  who 
had  himself  undergone  the  process,  saving  a  few  rare  exceptions. 
It  would  answer  every  purpose  of  any  investigator  who  wished 
for  knowledge  of  the  exact  dates  between  which  this  state  or  that 
lived  its  Reconstruction  life,  who  wanted  to  know  the  amount  of 
each  and  every  issue  of  bonds  made  during  the  period  in  ques- 
tion, the  tax  levy  of  each  county,  and  the  amount  of  taxes  squan- 
dered, as  well  as  properly  used.  From  it  possibly  we  could  learn 
much  about  the  proper  division  of  responsibility  between  negroes, 
scalawags,  and  carpetbaggers.  We  might  be  told  just  how  hon- 
estly or  dishonestly  the  affairs  of  the  Freedmen's  Bureau  were 
administered.  But  after  all,  for  the  purpose  of  measuring  the 
effect  of  Reconstruction  upon  present  relations  between  negroes 
and  whites  in  the  Southern  states  our  information  would  be  of 
little  value. 

The  heart  of  it  all  is  simply  the  common-sense  fact  that,  like 
New  England  hatred  of  Catholicism,  to  revert  to  Dr.  Hale,  the 
still  surviving  Southern  hatred  of  Reconstruction  and  opposition 
to  negro  suffrage  are  due  in  large  part  to  the  "  mixing  up  "  of 
many  things,  "  ascribed  by  the  sufferers,  more  or  less,"  to  the 
injection  of  the  negro  into  politics.  The  one  inevitable  result 
of  this  program  was  to  hopelessly,  almost  cruelly,  and  as  it  now 
seems  perhaps  even  permanently,  identify  him  with  a  period  for 
which  in  our  history  we  find  no  parallel.  Professor  Dunning,  with 
a  discernment  of  the  acute  mental  aspects  of  the  situation,  which 
are  usually  lost  sight  of  in  a  mass  of  physical  details,  has  likened 
the  condition  of  the  Southern  people,  in  the  presence  of  the 
"remorseless  approach  of  negro  rule,"  to  that  of  "the  prisoner 
of  tradition  who  watched  the  walls  of  his  cell  close  slowly  in  from 
day  to  day  to  crush  him."1  But  neither  "The  Pit  and  the  Pen- 
dulum," nor  any  other  creation  of  Poe's  imagination,  nor  even 
the  miseries  of  the  crimes  in  the  south  of  France,  as  touched  by 
the  magic  pen  of  Dumas,  can  convey  to  the  mind  which  does  not 
know  and  the  heart  which  has  not  felt,  a  sense  of  the  exquisite 

1  Dunning,  Essays  on  the  Civil  War  and  Reconstruction,  p.  248. 


676  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

mental  torture  through  which  these  people  passed.  Mr.  Lamar, 
great  apostle  of  peace  as  he  was,  said  that  "  the  iron  thrust  into  the 
hearts  of  the  Southern  people  by  this  wicked  and  relentless  policy 
burned  deeper  than  the  wounds  which  followed  hostile  armies." 

ATTITUDE  OF  THE  SOUTH  TOWARD  NORTHERN  TEACHERS 

It  is  hardly  strange  that  the  Southern  people,  situated  as  they 
were  during  this  period,  should  have  adopted  the  rigid  policy 
which  became  almost  a  law  of  their  social  life.  Their  attitude 
was  simply  this : 

You  come  here  as  the  "  friends,  deliverers,  and  saviors  "  of  the  negro.  You 
have  taught  him  that  we  are  his  hereditary  enemies,  and  have  been  for  genera- 
tions his  heartless  taskmasters.  In  season  and  out  you  delight  to  tell  him  of 
his  "  rights,"  while  to  us  you  speak  only  of  "  duties."  You  instill  it  into  his 
mind,  as  a  cardinal  tenet  of  his  new-found  faith,  that  he  is  the  equal  of  the 
white  man- — as  good  as,  if  not  better  than,  his  former  master.  Holding  your 
ideas,  and  pursuing  the  policy  you  do,  there  is  nothing  in  common  between  you 
and  us.  Go  your  way  and  we  shall  go  ours.  We  shall  not  molest  you,  but  we 
will  let  you  alone. 

We  must  appreciate  and  bear  in  mind  the  conditions  which  sur- 
rounded the  Southern  people,  if  we  would  understand  their  course. 
They  were  helpless  in  the  presence  of  what  they  felt  to  be  another 
invasion,  and  used  such  weapons  as  they  could  command.  One 
of  the  most  powerful  of  these  was  social  ostracism,  and  it  was  in- 
voked against  all  who  in  their  minds  sought  to  keep  the  iron  heel 
upon  their  necks.  Northern  teachers  shared  the  fate  of  associa- 
tion with  the  Northern  carpetbagger,  the  negro,  and  the  scalawag. 
They  all  came  in  together,  and  it  was  inevitable  that  to  some  ex- 
tent and  for  many  years  they  should  share  in  Southern  minds  the 
odium  attached  to  the  period  and  institution  whose  inauguration 
was  first  heralded  by  their  approach.  We  are  not  concerned  here 
with  the  question  of  the  correctness  or  incorrectness  of  the  South- 
ern attitude.  This  is  neither  an  indictment  nor  a  defense.  It 
is  an  attempt  in  part  to  explain  a  condition  which  so  many  people 
seem  not  able  to  understand. 


THE  PROBLEM 


677 


66.  THE  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEGRO1 

Politically,  there  still  exists  "the  solid  South";  yet,  for  the 
more  intimate  phases  of  Southern  opinion  in  relation  to  the  most 
serious  of  Southern  problems,  no  one  may  speak  as  a  representa- 
tive authority.  In  the  presence  of  the  negro  we  may  say  truly  that 
the  mind  of  the  South  is  of  many  minds.  Just  as  the  negro  divides 
the  sentiment  of  the  North,  he  divides  the  sentiment  of  the  South. 

Under  the  different  conditions  obtaining  to-day  in  our  industrial 
and  political  life,  from  year  to  year  and  from  place  to  place,  the 
negro  is  different  and  the  white  man  is  different.  In  each  local- 
ity of  the  South  the  problem  is,  therefore,  a  different  problem. 
Ultimately,  of  course,  the  problem  is  one  —  is  the  mutual  social, 
industrial,  and  political  adjustment  upon  the  same  soil,  of  two 
races  between  whom  the  difference  in  color  is  perhaps  the  most 
superficial  of  the  distinctions  which  divide  them. 

As  this  fundamental  problem,  however,  is  presented  under  the 
concrete  working  conditions  of  Southern  life,  it  assumes  a  dif- 
ferent phase  in  each  State  of  the  South,  in  each  county  of  the 
several  States,  and  even  in  the  separate  communities  of  each 
particular  county.2  When  studied  in  the  city  where  the  white 

1  By  Edgar  Gardner  Murphy.    Adapted  from  The  Present  South,  pp.  153-174, 
182-201.    Longmans,  Green,  &  Co.,  New  York,  1910. 

2  "  The  variety  of  conditions  in  different  parts  of  a  single  State  is  often  greater 
than  would  be  imagined.    If  one  were  to  say  that  certain  counties  of  Virginia, 
North   Carolina,  Tennessee,   and   Alabama   contain  fewer  negroes  than  certain 
counties  of  New  Jersey,  Connecticut,  Massachusetts,  or  Rhode  Island,  it  might 
awaken  surprise.    But  the  figures  for  a  number  of  counties  in  the  South  are  as 
follows  : 


TOTAL 

NEGROES 

TOTAL 

NEGKOES 

Garrett,  Md  
Buchanan.  Va  

17,701 
9,692 

126 

Unicoi,  Tenn  
Union,  Tenn  

5,581 
12,894 

130 
79 

Graham,  N.C  
Fentress,  Tenn.      .     .     . 
Pickett,  Tenn  

4,343 
6,  1  06 
^66 

26 

25 
1  1 

Van  liuren,  Tenn.    . 
Towns,  Ga  
Cullman,  Ala  

3,326 

4,748 
0,^4 

37 
7i 

21 

Sequatchie,  Tenn.  . 

3,326 

37 

Winston,  Ala  

17,849 

7 

"  The  twelve  counties  contain  90.756  people,  of  whom  575  are  negroes,  a  single 
negro  to  175  of  the  population.  Xantucket  Island,  Massachusetts,  contains  more 
negroes  than  most  of  these  counties. 


678  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

population  slightly  outnumbers  the  black,  where  churches  and 
schools  are  provided,  and  police  protection  is  abundant,  the  racial 
conditions  of  such  a  State  as  Alabama  present  one  problem  ;  in 
an  adjoining  county,  where  the  negroes  outnumber  the  white 
people  six  to  one,  where  both  races  are  poor,  where  schools  and 
churches  are  not  numerous  or  usually  impressive,  where  the  con- 
stabulary is  necessarily  inadequate,  our  racial  conditions  present 
what  may  be  readily  understood  to  be  a  very  different  problem 
indeed. 

Even  in  the  rural  South  the  problem  varies  from  neighbor- 
hood to  neighborhood.  It  is  one  thing  in  those  regions  of  light 
and  sandy  soil  where  the  farms  of  the  white  man  and  the  negro 
adjoin,  where  the  white  man's  farm  is  cultivated  by  his  own 
labor,  where  the  negro  is  not  to  any  large  extent  a  dependent 
class,  and  where  the  relation  of  master  and  servant  exists  but 
to  a  slight  degree ;  it  is  another  thing  where  the  negro  exists 
in  large  numbers  as  a  working  class  upon  the  plantation  of  the 
white  man.  It  assumes  still  another  phase  in  the  regions  of 
black  and  heavy  soil,  where  the  white  man  who  owns  the  land 
finds  it  too  unhealthful  to  work  his  own  plantation,  and  the  large 
negro  population  comes  into  personal  relations,  only  with  boss, 
overseer,  or  superintendent.  In  our  mining  regions,  moreover, 
where  the  negro  comes  into  direct  contact  with  the  white  man, 
not  as  a  landowner  or  overseer,  but  as  a  fellow  laborer,  often  with 
the  foreign  laborer,  we  find  a  different  problem  still.  The  problem 
differs  not  only  from  locality  to  locality,  but  from  man  to  man. 
There  is  a  personal  equation  as  well  as  a  local  equation. 

"  But  again  it  may  cause  surprise  to  find  how  small  is  the  proportion  of  white 
people  in  some  counties.  In  Issaquena  County,  Mississippi,  only  six  people 
in  every  hundred  are  white,  and  there  are  five  other  counties  in  which  the  per 
cent  is  less  than  ten.  In  fourteen  counties  in  the  South  seven  eighths  of  the  people 
are  negroes ;  in  fifty-four  counties,  three  quarters ;  and  in  one  hundred  and  eight 
counties,  two  thirds.  The  great  difference  in  race  proportions  in  different  counties 
is  shown  in  Alabama,  for  example,  where  the  proportion  varies  from  Winston 
County,  in  which  there  are  only  seven  negroes,  to  Lowndes,  in  which  they  number 
over  thirty  thousand. 

"  It  needs  no  argument  to  show  that  the  '  negro  problem '  is  quite  a  different 
thing  in  Winston  from  what  it  is  in  Lowndes."  —  GEORGE  S.  DICKERMAN,  in  the 
Southern  Workman,  Hampton,  Va.,  January,  1903. 


THE  PROBLEM  679 

And  in  addition  to  a  personal  and  a  local  equation  there  is 
a  class  equation.  In  certain  sections  of  the  South  the  negroes 
themselves  are  different  from  those  in  other  sections.  Those 
negroes  of  Virginia  who  have  been  reared  in  proximity  to  the 
white  population  of  the  higher  type,  reflect  in  aspiration,  in  char- 
acter, in  manner,  the  better  qualities  of  their  environment.  The 
negroes  of  other  sections  who  are  the  descendants  of  those  inferior 
slaves  that  were  "  weeded  out "  of  the  better  plantations,  and 
"sold  South,"  present  a  far  more  difficult  situation. 

And  the  white  population,  also,  has  its  social  classifications. 
Between  the  more  intelligent  negroes  and  the  representatives  of 
the  planter  class  —  the  old  aristocracy  —  there  -is  little  if  any 
friction.  But  between  the  negro  of  any  class  and  the  represent- 
ative of  the  "plain  people,"  the  people  whose  energies  are  re- 
creating the  fortunes  of  the  land,  whose  prejudices  are  quite  as 
vigorous  as  their  industry,  who  have  never  known  the  negro  at 
his  best  and  have  too  often  seen  him  at  his  worst,  —  between 
the  new  negro  and  the  new  white  man,  there  is  likely  to  be 
enmity  and  there  is  very  sure  to  be  suspicion.  The  Southern 
white  man  also  presents  those  marked  varieties  of  temperament 
and  disposition  which  go  everywhere  with  a  greater  complexity 
and  a  deeper  refinement  of  social  organization.  He  differs  also 
under  the  changing  and  instructive  forces  of  travel,  of  education, 
of  experience.  From  class  to  class,  from  man  to  man,  as  well 
as  from  place  to  place,  what  has  been  called  "  the  problem  of 
the  races  "  assumes  a  distinctive  phase  and  becomes  a  different 
problem. 

There  is  to-day  with  us  not  the  negro  problem  only,  under  its 
varied  personal  and  local  phases,  but  other  problems  with  it,  and 
when  a  man  attempts  to  discuss  the  negro  problem  at  the  South, 
he  may  begin  with  the  negro,  but  he  really  touches,  with  how- 
ever light  a  hand,  the  whole  bewildering  problem  of  a  civilization. 

The  difficulties  of  the  situation  are  not  simplified  by  the  fact 
that  this  civilization  is  included  within  a  larger  civilization  and  a 
more  democratic  order,  and  that  every  problem  of  the  one  neces- 
sarily emerges  under  its  varying  political  and  industrial  forms  as 
a  problem  of  the  other.  It  is  still  true  that  there  is  one  sense 


680  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

in  which  the  problem  itself  is  profoundly  sectional.  Locally  as 
well  as  historically  the  negro  question  is  a  Southern  question. 
Seven  eighths  of  the  negro  population  are  in  the  South,  and  they 
are  in  the  South  to  stay.  There  will  be  occasional  movements 
northward.  Long-established  negro  "  colonies "  in  cities  like 
New  York;  Philadelphia,  and  Cincinnati  will  continue  to  increase 
in  numbers.  But  these  people,  in  the  mass,  and  because  of  the 
.silent,  unyielding  sway  of  climatic  and  industrial  forces,  will  re- 
main south  of  an  imaginary  line  connecting  the  cities  of  Wash- 
ington and  St.  Louis.  Even  within  this  Southern  territory,  it  is 
evident  that  it  is  the  lower  South,  the  South  within  the  South, 
which  is  receiving  the  largest  relative  increase  in  the  number  of 
its  negroes. 

And  yet,  while  this  is  true,  it  is  also  true  that  there  are  two 
aspects  of  our  question  under  which  it  must  assume  a  national 
form.  Although  the  larger  proportion  of  the  black  population 
lies  within  the  South,  the  actual  number  of  negroes  at  the  North 
is  steadily  increasing ;  and  the  national  distribution  of  the  negro 
as  a  factor  of  population  involves  the  national  distribution  of  the 
negro  as  a  problem  of  American  civilization.1  From  being  a  prob- 
lem which  was  once  accorded  a  wrong  solution  in  one  section  of 
our  country,  it  has  become,  for  every  section  of  our  country,  a 
problem  which  has  received  no  adequate  solution  whatever. 

The  issues  presented  by  the  negro  in  American  life  are  national, 
however,  in  no  merely  geographical  sense.  They  are  national 
because  of  the  principles,  because  of  the  industrial  and  political 
assumptions,  which  they  involve.  The  national  welfare  is  the 
larger  context  of  every  local  problem  ;  and  while  the  negro  ques- 
tion finds  its  locality  in  the  South,  it  must  find  its  ultimate 
adjustment  —  if  it  ever  receives  adjustment  —  in  the  conscience, 
the  wisdom,  the  knowledge,  the  patience,  the  courage  of  the 

1  The  city  in  the  United  States  having  the  largest  number  of  negroes  in  1900 
was  Washington,  D.C.,  with  86,702  ;  then  follow  Baltimore  (79,258),  New  Orleans 
(77.714),  Philadelphia  (62,613),  and  New  York  (60,666).  It  will  be  noted  that  only 
one  city  south  of  Washington  has  as  large  a  negro  population  as  the  city  of  New 
York.  [The  census  of  1910  shows  the  following  distribution  :  Washington,  94,446  ; 
New  York.  91,709  ;  New  Orleans,  89,262  ;  Baltimore,  84,749  ;  Philadelphia.  84.459. 
Birmingham,  Atlanta,  and  Memphis  each  had  about  52,000  negroes  in  1910.  — Kn.] 


THE  PROBLEM  68 1 

Nation.  The  problem  under  its  older  form  was  created  by  the 
complicity  of  the  Nation.  The  problem  under  its  later  forms  has 
been  created  by  the  deliberate  enactments  of  the  Nation.  The 
Nation,  including  the  South,  the  West,  the  East,  the  North, 
cannot  be  permitted  to  evade  responsibilities  which  it  has  always 
been  zealous  to  accept  but  which  it  has  not  always  been  so  zealous 
to  discharge.  Least  of  all  can  the  South  be  a  party  to  that  eva- 
sion. If  national  action  could  be  really  inspired  by  the  wholesome 
and  constructive  spirit  of  a  truly  national  policy,  could  be  pursued 
really  in  the  interest  of  the  whole  people,  rather  than  in  the 
interest  of  sectional  bitterness  or  partisan  advantage,  it  would  bring 
significant  and  lasting  benefits.  Too  often,  however,  the  policies 
which  have  been  proposed  in  the  Nation's  name  have  been  so 
pursued  as  to  bring  the  negro  into  American  life  as  an  issue  of 
sectionalism  rather  than  as  an  occasion  for  nationality,  —  nation- 
ality of  temper,  of  sympathy,  of  purpose.  It  is  not  enough  to 
say  that  government  by  parties  is  inevitable.  There  are  some 
crimes  of  which  even  parties  ought  to  be  incapable. 

I  have  not  hesitated  to  speak  of  the  presence  of  the  negro  in 
American  life  as  a  "  problem."  We  have  been  told  that  the  negro 
should  be  regarded  not  as  a  problem  but  as  a  man.  There  is 
truth  in  the  suggestion.  And  yet  out  of  this  truth  there  arises 
the  problem  —  he  is  a  man,  and  yet  a  man  unlike,  in  history 
and  in  racial  character,  the  men  about  him.  Every  man,  white 
or  black,  presents  a  problem.  The  problem  increases  in  perplex- 
ity when  to  the  characteristics  of  the  individual  are  added  the 
characteristics  which  distinguish  and  differentiate  the  group  — 
social,  national,  or  racial  —  with  which  he  is  associated.  When 
this  group  is  brought  into  contact  with  another  group,  or  with 
other  groups,  the  elements  of  complexity  are  increased.  The 
problem  grows.  The  Russian  in  China  is  a  Chinese  problem. 
The  Jew  in  Russia  is  a  Russian  problem.  The  white  man  in 
Africa  is  an  African  problem.  The  African  in  America  is,  and 
will  be  for  centuries,  one  of  the  problems  of  American  life. 

Nor  can  we  say  that  the  negro  presents  not  a  problem  but  a 
task.  That  would  be  to  assume  that  the  supreme  need  is  the 
need  of  resources,  material  and  moral,  and  that  all  could  be  well 


682  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

adjusted  if  there  were  sufficient  power  and  sufficient  patience. 
These,  undoubtedly,  are  great  needs.  The  task  presents,  however, 
not  only  the  aspects  of  moral  and  physical  difficulty  but  of  intel- 
lectual confusion.  If  we  all  knew  what  to  do  and  there  were  not 
the  strength  or  the  will  to  do  it,  the  negro  would  present  a  task. 
Because  there  is  much  strength  and  some  will,  and  yet  because 
no  ten  men  have  ever  yet  agreed  as  to  what  we  should  all  do, 
the  negro  presents  something  more  than  a  task  ;  he  presents  a 
problem. 

Fortunately,  there  is  increasing  agreement  upon  the  program 
presented  by  such  institutions  as  Hampton  and  Tuskegee.  And 
yet  this  program  is  rightly  and  obviously  but  a  program  of 
beginnings.  That  is  its  supreme  success  ;  and  that  is  its  limita- 
tion. What  lies  beyond  ?  What,  politically  and  socially,  is  the 
terminus  ad  qncni,  the  far-on  result,  of  such  wise  and  righteous 
training  ?  Before  that  question  men  divide.  It  is  altogether 
probable  that  large  numbers  of  men,  white  and  black,  North 
and  South,  have  united  upon  the  support  of  this  program  for 
wholly  dissimilar  or  for  antagonistic  reasons.  All  are  agreed 
that  this  is  the  next  step.  The  next  step  to  what  ?  Before  that 
question  will  rise  all  the  ancient  and  lurid  specters  of  misappre- 
hension and  suspicion. 

As  the  negro  problem  has  been  presented  at  the  North  and 
in  the  South  —  its  more  especial  local  home  —  it  has  apparently 
assumed,  within  the  past  five  years, 1  certain  more  acute  and 
more  serious  forms.  To  these  unfortunate  developments  the 
whole  situation  has  contributed,  from  the  side  of  the  negro  and 
from  the  side  of  the  white  man.  And  yet,  while  it  is  true 
that  there  are  grave  evidences  of  loss,  it  is  equally  true  that  there 
are  marked  evidences  of  gain.  Progress  has  been  coincident  with 
retrogression.  Many  of  our  difficulties  are  due  to  the  delinquencies 
of  the  negro  ;  quite  as  many,  however,  are  due  to  his  advance- 
ment. Nor  do  the  difficulties  of  the  problem  lie  wholly  with  the 
negro.  At  the  South  the  processes  of  social  evolution  which 
were  accentuated,  if  not  inaugurated,  by  the  issue  of  the  Civil 
War  had  their  profound  effect  upon  the  life  of  the  negro  masses. 

1  That  is,  since  about  1900.  —  Kn. 


THE  PROBLEM  683 

They  have  also  involved,  however,  the  life  of  the  white  masses, 
and  have  set  to  work  within  it  certain  forces  of  transformation 
which,  for  many  years,  must  bear  with  insistent  pressure  upon  the 
fortunes  both  of  the  negro  and  of  the  South.  Let  us  turn,  first 
of  all,  to  the  consideration  of  some  of  the  social  changes  wrought 
in  the  masses  of  negro  life  by  the  issue  of  emancipation. 

Slavery  was  nothing  if  not  a  system  of  restraint.  This  restraint 
was  sometimes  expressed  in  ignoble  and  brutal  forms.  It  was 
sometimes  expressed  in  the  forms  of  a  kindly  and  not  ungenerous 
paternalism.  But,  good  or  bad,  it  held  the  race  in  check.  It 
imposed  its  traditional  limitations,  it  exercised  a  directive  and  re- 
strictive oversight.  It  was  bondage. 

This  bondage  fixed,  instinctively,  a  limit  beyond  which  the  negro 
must  not  ascend  ;  it  fixed  a  limit  below  which  the  negro  must 
not  fall.  It  operated  in  both  directions  as  a  check.  To  the  negro 
who  was  inclined  to  rise  into  the  larger  liberties  of  thought  and 
knowledge  it  opposed  —  it  was  compelled  to  oppose  —  its  barriers. 
To  the  negro  who  was  inclined  to  descend  into  the  debilities  of 
inefficiency  and  crime  it  also  opposed  —  it  was  compelled  to  op- 
pose —  its  barriers.  As  the  race  had  come  to  these  shores  from 
a  land  of  pitiless  barbarism,  the  number  of  negroes  who  tended 
to  fall  below  the  standard  of  slavery  was  probably  very  much 
greater  than  the  number  who  tended  to  rise  above  it.  It  is  evi- 
dent, therefore,  that  for  some  generations  the  net  result  of  slavery 
was  not,  in  its  practical  operation,  a  disadvantage  to  the  masses 
of  negro  life.  And  yet  the  deep  cry  of  the  .few  who  would 
aspire  will  always  possess  —  in  God's  heart  and  in  the  heart  of 
all  our  race  —  a  more  imperious  validity  than  the  dark  longing 
of  the  many  who  would  descend. 

Upon  the  two  tendencies  of  the  negro  thus  held  in  check 
the  effect  of  emancipation  must  be  evident.  Restraint  withdrawn, 
negro  life  is  released  in  two  directions  —  the  smaller  number  of 
better  negroes  is  permitted  to  rise,  and  many  of  them  do  rise  ; 
the  larger  number  of  weaker  negroes  is  permitted  to  fall,  and 
most  of  them  do  fall.  It  was  inevitable. 

The  South,  the  country  as  a  whole,  is  confronted,  therefore, 
with  an  upward  and  a  downward  tendency.  We  are  in  the 


684  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

presence  of  two  different,  two  opposing  movements  —  the  one 
serving  at  many  points  and  in  many  ways  to  check  the  other, 
but  each  distinct  and  each  representing  the  social  momentum  of 
natural  and  spontaneous  forces.  The  masses  of  the  race,  released 
from  the  restraint  which  slavery  imposed,  and  isolated,  through 
the  pressure  of  political  exigencies,  from  the  sympathetic  guid- 
ance of  the  better  South,  have  shown  many  of  the  tendencies  of 
moral  and  physical  reversion.  At  certain  points  within  the  South, 
especially  at  points  where  the  white  population  has  represented 
the  highest  average  of  culture  and  character,  these  tendencies 
have  been  arrested.  But  it  was  to  have  been  expected  that,  upon 
the  whole,  the  masses  of  the  negroes  would  first  become  worse 
before  becoming  better. 

And  yet  the  process  upward  —  although  the  story  of  a  smaller 
number  —  must  be  borne  clearly  and  steadily  in  mind.  The 
failure  of  great  masses  of  men  —  in  the  total  life  of  any  race  — 
must  not  obscure  the  achievements  of  the  few.  Indeed,  to  the 
historian  of  the  great  ventures  and  experiments  of  civilization, 
the  achievements  of  the  few  are  of  more  significance  than  the 
failures  of  the  many.  For  achievement  —  even  though  upon  a 
small  scale  —  is  a  demonstration  of  possibilities.  It  gives  a  starting 
point  for  constructive  theories  and  policies ;  it  gives  authority  to 
anticipation. 

It  is  no  small  thing  that  the  illiteracy  of  the  negro  males  of 
voting  age  has  been  reduced  in  the  Southern  States  from  88  per 
cent  in  1870  to  52  per  cent  in  igoo;1  and  yet  it  is  only  when 
we  turn  to  the  more  intimate  victories,  here  and  there,  of  indi- 
vidual men  and  women  that  we  get  the  full  measure  of  the  negro's 
promise.  Nor  would  I  be  disposed  to  seek  that  promise  in  the 
rare  and  exceptional  attainments  of  the  men  of  genius.  Neither 
in  the  marked  reduction  of  the  illiteracy  of  the  masses  nor  in 
the  marked  distinction  of  such  artists  as  Tanner  or  Dunbar  or 
such  leaders  as  Washington,  Grant,  and  Walker  can  we  seek  the 
sure  evidences  of  a  people's  essential  progress.  All  promise  and 
all  attainment  are  worth  while,  but  the  only  adequate  measure 
of  social  efficiency  and  the  only  ultimate  test  of  essential  racial 

1  And  to  37.2  per  cent  in  1910. —  ED. 


THE  PROBLEM  685 

progress  lies  in  the  capacity  to  create  the  home ;  and  it  is  in  the 
successful  achievement  of  the  idea  and  the  institution  of  the 
family,  of  the  family  as  accepted  and  honored  under  the  conditions 
of  Western  civilization,  that  we  are  to  seek  the  real  criterion  of 
negro  progress. 

For  the  very  reason  that  the  test  is  so  severe  — and  yet  so 
instinctively  American  —  the  weaknesses  of  the  race  will  seem 
conspicuous  and  formidable.  American  society,  as  a  whole,  stands 
not  unscathed  in  the  white  light  of  its  own  ideal.  The  heritage 
of  the  negro  —  his  heritage  from  slavery  and  from  the  darker 
age  which  preceded  slavery  —  has  given  him  but  small  equipment 
for  the  achievement  of  this  task.  And  yet  the  negro  home  exists. 
That  its  existence  is,  in  many  cases,  but  a  naive  pretense,  that 
negro  life  often  proceeds  upon  its  way  with  a  disregard  —  partly 
immoral,  partly  nonmoral  —  of  our  accepted  marital  conditions, 
is  evident  enough.  And  yet  those  who  would  observe  broadly 
and  closely  will  find  a  patiently  and  persistently  increasing  num- 
ber of  true  families  and  real  homes,  a  number  far  in  excess  of 
the  popular  estimate,  homes  in  which  with  intelligence,  probity, 
industry,  and  an  admirable  simplicity,  the  man  and  the  woman 
are  creating  our  fundamental  institution.  Scores  of  such  homes, 
in  some  cases  hundreds,  exist  in  numbers  of  our  American 
communities  —  exist  for  those  who  will  try  to  find  them  and  will 
try,  sympathetically,  to  know  them.  But  one  of  the  tragic  elements 
of  our  situation  lies  in  the  fact  that  of  this  most  honorable  and 
most  hopeful  aspect  of  negro  life  the  white  community,  North  or 
South,  knows  practically  nothing.  Of  the  destructive  factors  in 
negro  life  the  white  community  hears  to  the  uttermost,  hears 
through  the  press  and  police  court ;  of  the  constructive  factors  of 
negro  progress  —  the  negro  school,  the  saner  negro  church,  the 
negro  home  —  the  white  community  is  in  ignorance.  Until  it 
does  know  this  aspect  of  our  negro  problem  it  may  know  more 
or  less  accurately  many  things  about  the  negro  ;  but  it  cannot 
know  the  negro. 

The  white  man,  North  as  well  as  South,  feels  —  and  feels 
wisely  —  that  the  social  barrier  should  remain.  So  long,  however, 
as  it  remains  it  shuts  out  not  only  the  negro  from  the  white  man 


686  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

but  the  white  man  from  the  negro.  Seeing  the  negro  loafer  on 
the  streets,  the  negro  man  or  woman  in  domestic  service,  the 
negro  laborer  in  the  fields,  is  not  seeing  the  negro.  It  is  seeing 
the  negro  on  one  side.  It  is  seeing  the  negro  before  achievement 
begins,  often  before  achievement  —  the  achievement  which  the 
world  esteems  —  is  possible.  Knowing  the  white  man  only  under 
those  conditions  would  not  be  knowing  the  white  man.  Yet  this 
side  of  the  negro  is  usually  the  only  side  of  which  the  white 
community  has  direct  and  accurate  knowledge.  It  is  the  knowl- 
edge of  industrial  contact,  and  of  industrial  contact  upon  its  lower 
plane.  It  is  not  the  knowledge  of  reciprocal  obligations,  of  social 
revelation.  And  at  the  point  where  this  lower  contact  ceases,  at 
the  point  where  the  negro's  real  efficiency  begins,  and  he  passes 
out  of  domestic  service  or  unskilled  employment  into  a  larger 
world,  the  white  community  loses  its  personal  and  definite  infor- 
mation ;  the  negro  passes  into  the  unknown.  As  the  negro 
attains  progress,  he,  by  the  very  fact  of  progress,  removes  the 
tangible  evidence  of  progress  from  the  immediate  observation  of 
the  white  community.  Thus  the  composite  idea,  the  social  concep- 
tion of  the  negro  which  is  beginning  to  obtain  among  us,  is 
determined  more  largely  by  the  evidences  of  negro  retrogression 
or  negro  stagnation  than  by  the  evidence,  the  real  and  increasing 
evidence,  of  negro  advancement. 

Nor  is  the  inadequacy  of  the  composite  picture  of  the  negro 
due  only  to  the  way  in  which  the  social  cleavage  between  the  races 
imposes  its  limitation  upon  the  vision  of  the  white  community. 
The  inadequacy  of  the  picture  is  due  to  subjective  as  well  as  to 
objective  causes.  A  partly  mistaken  conception  of  the  negro  has 
resulted  from  the  fact  that  the  white  world  does  not  see  the 
negro  at  his  best ;  it  has  also  resulted  from  the  fact  that  the 
white  world  which  now  sees  the  negro  habitually,  which  judges 
him  and  speaks  of  him  most  constantly,  is  not  infrequently  the 
white  world  at  its  worst.  How  large  a  number  of  the  white  world, 
upon  its  educated  side,  have  ever  really  seen  the  life  of  a  negro 
home,  or  the  life  of  the  negro  school,  or  the  life  of  the  saner 
negro  church  ?  The  conception  of  the  old-time  darky  is  a  national 
heritage,  a  heritage  more  sacred  to  the  South  than  those  outside 


THE  PROBLEM  687 

the  South  can  always  understand.  That  conception,  however, 
as  it  lives  in  the  consciousness  of  our  domestic  and  literary  life, 
is  due  not  to  one  factor  only  but  to  two.  It  was  the  result,  like  all 
conceptions,  of  the  thing  seen  and  the  seeing  eye.  It  was  not 
due  alone  to  the  negro  of  our  older  age.  It  was  due  to  the  eye 
which  looked  upon  him,  which  judged  broadly  his  qualities  of 
character,  which  had  regard  to  his  fidelities,  and  which  under- 
stood, with  the  humor,  the  patience,  the  magnanimity  of  an 
educated  class,  the  occasions  of  the  negro's  failure.  The  concep- 
tion of  the  old-time  darky  is  thus  a  double  contribution,  the 
contribution  of  the  better  negro  as  known  and  interpreted  to  us 
through  the  better  heart  of  the  older  South. 

But  the  mind  of  that  older  South  no  longer  dominates  the 
visual  habits,  the  racial  prepossessions  of  Southern  life.  The 
political  and  industrial  reorganization  of  the  South  has  formed 
a  new  democracy,  a  democracy  which  has  brought  into  its  fellow- 
ship the  neglected  masses  of  the  white  population,  which  has 
been  forced  to  seek  its  basis  of  organization  upon  the  one  ground 
of  the  unity  of  race  ;  and  within  this  larger  white  world  —  alert, 
vigorous,  confident,  assertive  —  many  of  the  old  attitudes  of  spirit 
have  passed  away.  An  educated  minority  may  transfer  to  the 
crude  multitudes  of  a  new  order  a  sense  of  power,  a  sense  of 
freedom,  a  sense  of  responsibility,  but  not  its  more  intimate  phases 
of  temper,  of  individuality  —  its  urbanities,  its  genial  humor,  its 
share  in  those  pervasive  charities  which  spring  from  a  sense 
of  leisure  and  from  an  assured  consciousness  of  power,  quite  as 
much  as  from  a  fertile  earnestness  of  heart. 

The  old  South  does  last  on  within  the  new,  the  old  South 
with  its  magnanimity  and  its  poise ;  and,  here  and  there,  in 
numberless  men  and  women  and  in  many  establishments  of  city 
and  country,  one  may  still  observe  the  persistence  and  charm  of 
that  amazing  patience  with  which  the  South  has  served  the  negro 
while  the  negro  has  served  the  South.  And  yet  these  forces  are 
no  longer  dominant.  The  new  world  which  has  resulted  from 
our  political  and  industrial  reorganization  has  brought  into  power 
vast  multitudes  of  the  unlettered  and  the  untrained,  a  white  popu- 
lation possessing  all  the  pride,  all  the  energy,  all  the  assertiveness 


688  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  the  older  order,  without  its  experience  or  its  culture.  It  does 
not  always  rule.  It  has  usually  been  so  wise  and  so  sincere  as 
to  choose  its  leaders  from  the  ranks  of  trained  and  at  least  edu- 
cated men  ;  but  among  these  it  has  usually  chosen  those  who 
were  fitted  to  understand  it  and  to  serve  it  rather  than  those 
who  would  instruct  it.  Have  Northern  constituencies  wrought 
otherwise  ?  But  when  the  cruder  forces  of  the  South  have  found 
themselves  in  the  possession  of  nobler  leaders,  chosen  by  them 
or  chosen  for  them  by  the  occasional  influence  of  the  commercial 
and  professional  classes,  the  masses  of  the  people  have  been 
quick  to  respond  to  the  appeal  of  every  free  and  upbuilding  pur- 
pose ;  and  here  lies  the  promise  of  the  future.  As  yet,  however, 
it  is  too  soon  to  expect  that  the  new  and  untrained  elements  of 
the  white  democracy  will  view  the  negro  otherwise  than  from 
their  own  personal  and  present  and  actual  standpoint.  In  States 
where,  in  many  localities,  more  than  20  per  cent  of  the  white 
men  of  voting  age  are  illiterate  ;  where  the  rural  population  which 
can  read  and  write  does  actually  read  and  write  but  little  ;  where 
large  numbers  of  the  people  have  known  nothing  of  the  slave 
except  as  the  representative  of  a  hated  competitive  labor,  and 
where  the  negro  in  freedom  has  lost  many  of  the  virtues  of  his 
bondage,  it  is  impossible  to  suppose  that  ignorant  men  will  judge 
the  negro,  or  any  other  factor  of  experience,  otherwise  than 
ignorantly.  Even  where  knowledge  is  greater  and  experience 
broader,  the  popular  conception  of  the  negro  is  largely  determined 
by  the  impressions  that  arise  among  the  ignorant.  Almost  every 
family  makes,  in  thought  and  expression,  an  "  honorable  excep- 
tion "  of  the  servants  of  its  own  household,  the  negroes  it  really 
knows  ;  but  the  collective  conception,  the  composite  picture  of 
the  negro,  is  too  often  the  negro  as  interpreted  through  the 
medium  of  an  untrained  public  opinion,  an  opinion  sometimes 
voiced  in  the  rant  of  the  political  hustings,  in  sensational  press 
reports,  in  the  rumors  of  the  street.  The  mind  of  the  white 
world,  as  it  sees  and  judges  the  negro,  is  thus  not  the  mind  of 
the  white  world  at  its  best.  It  is  a  mind  now  influenced  by  the 
presence  within  it,  in  abnormal  proportions,  of  unsympathetic  and 
untutored  forces ;  forces  which  are  gaining  daily,  however,  in 


THE  PROBLEM  689 

both  sympathy  and  training ;  forces  which  may  well  be  the  occa- 
sion, therefore,  of  no  inconsiderate  pessimism  but  of  a  reasonable 
and  wholesome  faith,  a  faith  which  the  true  citizen  of  a  democ- 
racy gives,  and  is  bound  to  give,  to  every  social  possibility  of 
his  country's  life. 

We  may  be  tempted  to  say,  therefore,  that  the  kindlier  con- 
ception of  the  old-time  negro  resulted  from  the  fact  that  the 
white  world  at  its  best  was  looking  upon  the  negro  at  his  best ; 
the  harsher  conception  of  the  present  negro  resulting  from  the 
fact  that  a  white  world  which  is  not  at  its  best  is  looking  upon 
the  negro  at  his  worst.  The  generalization  thus  expressed  may 
be  too  clearly  drawn,  and  yet  it  is  sufficiently  evident  that  just 
at  this  period  in  the  history  of  the  South  the  two  races  have 
entered  into  new  conditions,  and  that  under  these  conditions 
their  relations  to  each  other  are  at  many  points  the  relations  of 
disadvantage. 

There  is  present  in  the  North  another  factor  which  is  also 
present  in  the  South,  and  which  contributes  its  sinister  and 
baffling  element  to  the  composite  picture  upon  which  I  have 
just  dwelt.  This  factor  is  the  "  criminal "  negro ;  numerically 
not  a  large  proportion  of  the  race,  but  as  a  factor  of  disturbance 
one  of  the  baneful  as  well  as  one  of  the  most  formidable  of 
social  forces.1  The  number  of  such  negroes  is  relatively  small, 
and  yet  it  has  assumed  a  morbid  and  unfortunate  importance. 
To  this  importance  three  influences  have  contributed. 

First,  the  distinctively  criminal  negro  is  often  guilty  of  unusual 
and  abnormal  crimes.  He  is  associated  in  the  public  mind  with 
one  crime,  particularly,  which  is  unspeakable  in  its  brutality  and 
infamy.  It  is  true  that  this  crime  has  sometimes  been  charged 
against  the  innocent ;  that  is  true  of  all  crimes.  It  is  also  true 

1  Negro  crime  seems  to  be  proportionately  greater  at  the  North  than  at  the 
South  —  due  probably  to  the  fact  that  at  the  North  the  negro  is  found  under  the 
conditions  of  the  city,  while  at  the  South  he  lives  chiefly  under  the  simpler  and 
more  wholesome  conditions  of  the  country.  The  percentage  of  crime  is,  in 
both  sections,  much  larger  for  the  negro  than  for  the  white  population,  and  the 
statement  of  the  text  as  to  the  small  proportion  of  criminal  negroes  refers  only 
to  the  degenerate  roving  type,  peculiarly  irresponsible,  and  guilty  of  the  more 
serious  offenses. 


690  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

—  as  has  been  suggested  —  that  the  number  of  such  crimes  is  rela- 
tively small ;  and  yet  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that,  in  order  to 
shield  the  victim,  the  suppression  of  the  news  of  this  crime  is  often 
as  significant  as  its  exaggeration.  But  the  fact  that  the  criminals  of 
this  class  are  so  few  in  number,  should  make  the  attitude  of  the 
public  mind  in  dealing  with  them  a  task  of  simplicity  and  ease. 
And  yet,  because  of  the  deep  forces  of  interracial  suspicion,  a 
crime  which  should  be  the  very  last  crime  to  present  any  other 
than  an  essential  human  issue  between  good  and  evil,  has  been 
made  one  of  the  most  complex  and  difficult  of  "  questions,"  the 
occasion  for  some  of  the  most  irreducible  points  in  the  discussion 
of  racial  issues.  I  think  it  must  be  fairly  said  that  the  difficul- 
ties of  the  situation  are  chargeable  to  false  conditions  in  the 
public  opinion  of  both  races.  Negro  opinion,  organized  and 
unorganized,  has  seemed  to  be  too  protective ;  white  opinion  has 
too  often  been  lawlessly  retributive.  .  .  . 

I  think  it  may  be  fairly  said  that  the  relative  number  of  lynch- 
ings  is  decreasing  from  year  to  year.  In  the  South,  especially,  there 
is  an  evident  disposition  upon  the  part  of  the  more  influential 
press  to  accord  to  the  negro  the  measure  of  exact  justice  before 
the  law.1  That  this  ideal  will  be  attained  immediately  no  one 

1  The  expressions  of  such  journals  as  the  Constitution,  of  Atlanta,  Ga.,  and 
the  Advertiser,  of  Montgomery,  Ala.,  are  noteworthy,  and  yet  quite  characteristic 
of  the  Southern  press. 

Said  the  Constitution  under  date  of  June  27,  1903  : 

The  time  when  the  lynching  of  a  certain  breed  of  brutes  could  be  winked  at  because  of 
satisfaction  that  punishment  came  to  him  quickly  and  to  the  uttermost,  has  given  way  to  a 
time  when  the  greater  peril  to  society  is  the  mob  itself  that  does  the  work  of  vengeance. 
Against  the  growth  of  that  evil  the  best  sense  of  the  nation  needs  to  combine  and  enforce 
an  adequate  protection. 

Said  the  Advertiser  under  dates  of  September  16  and  October  6,  1903  : 
The  white  race  has  a  duty  which  is  imperative.  It  is  a  duty  which  is  demanded  by  justice, 
by  humanity,  and  by  self-interest.  Ours  is  and  will  ever  be  the  governing  race.  It  will  elect 
the  lawmakers,  make  the  laws,  and  enforce  them.  That  being  so,  that  principle  of  eternal 
justice  which  bids  the  strong  protect  the  weak,  makes  it  our  duty  to  protect  the  negro  in  all 
his  legal,  industrial,  and  social  rights.  We  should  sec  that  he  has  equal  and  exact  justice 
in  the  courts,  that  the  laws  bear  alike  on  the  black  and  the  white,  that  he  be  paid  for  his  labor 
just  as  the  white  man  is  paid,  and  that  no  advantage  be  taken  of  his  ignorance  and  credulity.  .  . . 
And  the  task  is  a  simple  and  easy  one.  The  courts  and  juries  should  know  no  difference 
between  whites  and  blacks  when  a  question  of  right  and  justice  is  up  for  settlement.  The 
man  who  employs  a  negro  to  work  for  him  should  deal  as  fairly  with  him  as  he  would  deal 
by  a  white  man.  The  life  of  a  negro  who  has  done  no  wrong  should  be  as  sacred  as  the  life 


THE  PROBLEM  691 

can  predict.  So  long  as  any  element  of  the  population  is,  as  a 
class,  in  a  position  of  marked  economic  dependence  upon  stronger 
factions  or  classes,  it  will  certainly  suffer  —  however  unfortunately 
or  unjustly  —  from  the  pressure  of  civil  and  political  prejudice. 
The  intelligent  negro  may  well  ask  of  our  public  opinion  a  larger 
measure  of  discrimination  ;  and  yet  he  may  well  lay  the  greater 
stress  upon  his  gains  rather  than  upon  his  losses.  Certainly  his 
gains  will  be  of  small  avail  if  the  contemplation  of  his  wrongs 
shall  supersede  in  his  life  the  positive  acceptance  and  the  definite 
using  of  his  rights.  The  consciousness  of  grievances  is  not  an 
inspiring  social  asset  for  a  class  or  for  a  race.  There  need  be  no 
surrender  of  essential  principles,  and  yet  stress  may  well  be  laid, 
confidently  and  hopefully,  upon  the  privileges  that  are  actually 
available  for  the  negro  in  American  life.  Here,  in  the  using  of 
the  positive  liberties  and  advantages  of  education  and  of  industry, 
of  religious  and  political  freedom,  the  negro,  through  the  accep- 
tance of  a  program  of  positive  progress,  may  enter  into  a  larger 
heritage  than  is  open  to  any  like  number  of  his  race  in  any  quarter 
of  the  world.  Important  are  some  of  the  advantages  he  has  not ; 
but  more  important  are  the  many  advantages  which  he  has. 

Nor  can  it  be  said  that  these  advantages  are  Northern  rather 
than  Southern.  There  are  to-day  almost  nine  millions  of  negroes 
in  the  United  States.  After  thirty  years  of  freedom,  nearly  eight 
millions  of  them  remain  within  the  borders  of  the  South.  Why 
have  they  remained  ?  The  broad  and  living  decisions  of  great 
masses  of  men  possess  a  dumb  but  interesting  significance.  They 
are  never  wholly  irrational  or  sentimental.  The  negro  remains 
at  the  South  because,  among  the  primary  and  the  secondary 
rewards  of  honest  life,  he  gets  more  of  the  primary  rewards  at 
the  South  than  at  the  North.  There  is  no  idle  flattery  of  the 
South  in  this  declaration  of  the  Principal  of  Tuskegee  : 

It  is  in  the  South  that  the  black  man  finds  an  open  sesame  in  labor,  indus- 
try, and  business  that  is  not  surpassed  anywhere.  It  is  here  that  that  form  of 

of  a  white  man.  He  is  in  our  power,  politically  and  otherwise,  and  justice,  humanity,  and 
good  policy  unite  in  demanding  for  him  equal  and  exact  justice.  Keep  the  negroes  among 
us,  give  them  the  full  protection  of  the  laws,  and  let  them  have  justice  in  all  things.  That 
is  the  solution  of  the  race  question. 


692  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

slavery  which  prevents  a  man  from  selling  his  labor  to  whom  he  pleases  on 
account  of  his  color,  is  almost  unknown.  We  have  had  slavery  in  the  South, 
now  dead,  that  forced  an  individual  to  labor  without  a  salary,  but  none  that 
compelled  a  man*to  live  in  idleness  while  his  family  starved. 

The  words  are  not  too  strong.1  The  negro  knows  that  in  the 
essential  struggle  for  existence  the  spirit  of  the  South  has 
been  the  spirit  of  kindliness  and  helpfulness.  Nor  is  it  true  that 
the  negro  may  there  perform  only  the  deeds  of  drudgery,  or 
those  petty  offices  that  are  the  badges  of  a  menial  dependence. 
The  negro  at  the  South  is  preacher,  teacher,  physician,  and  law- 
yer ;  he  is  in  the  dry-goods  business,  the  grocery  business,  the 
livery  business,  the  real-estate  business,  the  wood-and-coal  busi- 
ness ;  as  well  as  in  the  business  of  running  errands  and  blacking 
boots.  He  is  shoemaker  and  carpenter  and  blacksmith.  He  is 
everywhere  where  there  is  anything  to  do,  and  if  he  can  do  it 
well,  he  is  usually  treated  fairly  and  paid  for  it  honestly.  Except 
in  professional  capacities,  he  is  employed  by  all,  he  does  business 
with  all.  There  is  just  one  line  drawn,  however,  and  it  is  per- 
haps significant.  In  a  Southern  city,  with  the  life  of  which  I 
am  familiar,  there  is  a  successful,  respected  negro  man,  with 
many  industrial  and  commercial  functions  toward  the  community 
in  which  he  lives.  He  is  a  keeper  of  carriages,  a  dealer  in  wood 
and  coal,  a  butcher,  and  vendor  of  vegetables,  —  and  an  under- 
taker. There  is  one  department  of  his  varied  establishment 
which  has  never  had  the  monetary  support  of  the  white  popula- 
tion, and  which  is  sustained  entirely  by  the  people  of  his  own  race. 
The  white  people  of  the  city  will  buy  their  supplies  of  him,  will 
purchase  his  wood  and  his  coal,  will  leave  their  horses  in  his 
stables,  and  will  ride  in  his  carriages  ;  —  but  he  may  not  bury 

1  Referring  to  the  statistics  of  the  United  States  Census  for  1900  (Vol.  II, 
p.  ccvii),  Booker  T.  Washington  says:  "Here  is  the  unique  fact,  that  from  a 
penniless  population  just  out  of  slavery,  372,414  owners  of  homes  have  emerged, 
and  of  these  255, 156 are  known  to  own  their  homes  absolutely  free  of  encumbrance. 
In  these  heads  of  negro  families  lies  the  pledge  of  my  race  to  American  civiliza- 
tion."—  See  the  Tradesman,  Chattanooga,  Tenn.,  January  i,  1904,  p.  99.  [In  1910, 
in  the  Southern  States  only,  441,918  colored  families  owned  their  own  homes, 
323,786  of  them  being  unencumbered.  The  Census  does  not  in  this  particular  dis- 
tinguish negroes  from  other  colored  races  —  Indians,  Chinese,  and  Japanese.  —  ED.] 


THE  PROBLEM  693 

their  dead.    There  is  in  this  simple  incident  a  monograph  upon 
the  subject  of  the  negro  in  the  South. 

But  the  South  gives  to  the  negro  something  more  merciful 
than  sentiment  and  something  more  necessary  than  the  unnegoti- 
able  abstractions  of  social  right.  The  South  gives  to  him  the 
best  gift  of  a  civilization  to  an  individual  —  the  opportunity  to 
live  industriously  and  honestly.  As  the  representative  of  the 
negro  race  whom  I  have  already  quoted  has  also  said : 

If  the  negro  would  spend  a  dollar  at  the  opera,  he  will  find  the  fairest 
opportunity  at  the  North ;  if  he  would  earn  the  dollar,  his  fairest  opportunity 
is  at  the  South.  The  opportunity  to  earn  the  dollar  fairly  is  of  much  more 
importance  to  the  negro  just  now  than  the  opportunity  to  spend  it  at  the  opera. 1 

The  large  and  imperious  development  of  trades-unionism  at 
the  North  (the  writer  would  not  speak  in  criticism  of  organized 
labor  in  itself)  is  already  eliminating  the  negro  as  an  industrial 
factor.  Du  Bois's  book  on  the  negro  in  Philadelphia,  to  which 
I  have  already  referred,  is  but  a  rescript  of  the  story  of  his  life 
in  every  community  at  the  East.  Nothing  could  be  more  search- 
ingly  relentless  than  the  slow,  silent,  pitiless  operation  of  the 
social  and  economic  forces  that  are  destroying  the  negro,  body 
and  soul,  in  the  Northern  city.  None  knows  it  so  well  as  the 
negro  himself.  The  race  prejudice,  which  Professor  Shaler  of 
Harvard  has  recently  told  us  is  as  intense  at  the  North  as  it  is 
anywhere  in  the  world,  first  forbids  to  the  negro  the  membership 
of  the  labor  union,  and  then  forbids  to  the  employer  the  services 

1  It  is  of  some  significance  that  in  1900  there  were  732,362  farms  operated  by 
negroes  in  the  South.  We  find  that  150,000  Southern  negroes  now  own  their 
own  farms,  and  28,000  more  are  recorded  as  part  owners  (Twelfth  Census  of  the 
U.S.,  Vol.  V,  pp.  xciii,  4,  172).  The  value  of  the  property  in  all  the  farms  operated 
by  negroes  at  the  South  was  $469,506,555.  In  more  than  half  the  counties  of 
Virginia  over  70  per  cent  of  the  negro  farmers  are  owners  or  managers,  and  in 
33  counties  of  the  State  the  proportion  is  over  80  per  cent  (see  the  interesting 
papers  in  the  Southern  Workman,  Hampton,  Va.,  for  October,  1902,  and  Janu- 
ary, 1903 ;  see  also  the  valuable  monograph  by  Carl  Kelsey,  "  The  Negro 
Farmer";  Chicago,  111.,  Jennings  and  Pye,  1903).  [In  1910,  in  the  Southern 
States,  there  were  880,837  negro  farm  operators;  there  were  890,141  negro  and 
other  nonwhite  farm  operators,  218,467  of  whom  owned  their  own  farms.  The 
value  of  all  farms  operated  by  colored  persons  in  1910,  in  the  South,  was 
$900,132,334.  The  value  of  farms  held  by  colored  owners  was  $272,992,238.  —  ED.] 


694  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  non-union  labor.  If  the  employer  turn  wholly  to  the  non-union 
men,  he  finds  that  rather  than  work  beside  the  negro,  these 
usually  throw  down  their  tools  and  walk  out  of  the  door  of 
factory  or  shop.  And  so  the  dreary  tale  proceeds.  The  negro 
at  the  North  can  be  a  waiter  in  hotel  and  restaurant  (in  some); 
he  can  be  a  butler  or  footman  in  club  or  household  (in  some); 
or  the  haircutter  or  bootblack  in  the  barber  shop  (in  some) ;  and 
I  say  "  in  some  "  because  even  the  more  menial  offices  of  indus- 
try are  being  slowly  but  gradually  denied  to  him.  And  what  is 
the  opportunity  of  such  an  environment  to  the  development  of 
self-dependence,  what  is  the  value  to  his  labor  of  so  inadequate 
and  restricted  a  market  for  the  complex  capacities  and  the  legit- 
imate ambitions  of  an  awakening  manhood  ?  And  what  lies  at 
the  background  of  the  man  ?  What  of  the  family,  the  wife,  the 
mother,  the  children  ?  What  are  the  possibilities,  there,  of  self- 
respect,  of  decency,  of  hope  ?  What  are  the  possibilities  of  bread  ? 

The  economic  problem  lies  at  the  very  heart  of  the  social  wel- 
fare of  any  race.  The  possibility  of  honest  bread  is  the  noblest 
possibility  of  a  civilization  ;  and  it  is  the  indispensable  condition 
of  thrift,  probity,  and  truth.  No  people  can  do  what  is  right 
or  love  what  is  good  if  they  cannot  earn  what  they  need.  The 
South  has  sins  for  which  she  must  give  account ;  but  it  may  be 
fairly  said  that  as  yet  the  South  has  no  problem  so  great,  so 
intimately  serious  as  this.  The  South  has  sometimes  abridged 
the  negro's  right  to  vote,  but  the  South  has  not  yet  abridged 
his  right,  in  any  direction  of  human  interest  or  of  honest  effort, 
to  earn  his  bread.  To  the  negro,  just  now,  the  opportunity,  by 
honest  labor,  to  earn  his  bread  is  very  much  more  important 
than  the  opportunity  to  cast  his  vote.  The  one  opportunity  is 
secondary,  the  other  is  primary ;  the  one  is  incidental,  —  the 
greater  number  of  enlightened  peoples  have  lived  happily  for 
centuries  without  it,  —  the  other  is  elemental,  structural,  indispen- 
sable ;  it  lies  at  the  very  basis  of  life  and  integrity  —  whether 
individual  or  social. 

It  is  not  possible  or  desirable,  however,  to  ignore  the  political 
issues  created  by  the  presence  of  the  negro  in  our  national  life. 
If  the  negro  were  the  only  factor  to  be  considered,  the  questions 


THE  PROBLEM  695 

affecting  his  political  status  might  be  temporarily  postponed.  But 
the  negro  is,  in  some  respects,  the  least  of  the  factors  involved. 
The  political  and  administrative  organization  of  our  country  is 
democratic.  Its  institutional  assumptions  are  the  assumptions  of 
a  free  democracy.  Before  all  questions  which  touch  the  political 
status  of  any  race  or  class  of  men  there  arises  the  primary  ques- 
tion as  to  the  effect  upon  our  country  and  its  constitution,  upon 
its  civic  customs  and  its  habits  of  thought,  of  the  creation  of 
a  serf  class,  a  fixed  nonvoting  population.  Such  a  class  can  be 
established  and  continued  only  through  habitual  disregard  to  all 
the  moral  presumptions  of  our  organic  law ;  and  such  disregard, 
in  its  reactive  influence  upon  those  who  continue  it,  must  result 
in  a  lowering  of  political  standards  and  a  vitiation  of  civic  fiber, 
far  more  disastrous  to  the  strong  than  to  the  weak.  Such  prac- 
tices may  begin  with  class  discriminations,  but  these  discriminations 
soon  forget  their  class  distinctions  ;  white  men  end  by  using 
against  white  men  the  devices  which  they  began  by  confining  to 
black  men ;  the  whole  suffrage  becomes  corrupt ;  a  corrupt  suf- 
frage eliminates  from  political  leadership  the  men  who  are  too 
free  or  too  pure  to  use  it ;  it  becomes  the  basis  of  control  for  an 
ever-degenerating  political  leadership  ;  and  what  began  as  a  denial 
of  political  privilege  to  a  despised  faction  at  the  bottom  results 
in  the  control  at  the  top  of  those  very  elements  of  an  irresponsible 
ignorance  which  discrimination  was  intended  to  eliminate.  The 
retrogressive  forces  which  were  dreaded  in  a  faction  become  en- 
throned over  all ;  and  the  real  mind  and  conscience  of  the  State, 
in  attempting  to  secure  their  freedom  by  protecting  themselves 
against  the  ignorant,  are  despoiled  of  their  freedom  through 
the  very  processes  of  their  self-protection ;  are  put,  by  their  own 
methods,  in  bondage  to  the  cruder  forces  of  society. 

The  difficulties  of  the  situation  have  been  supremely  serious, 
and  complex  beyond  description.  It  is  obviously  true  —  as  has 
just  been  stated  —  that  a  democracy  cannot  consent  to  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  dependent  class.  And  yet  it  is  equally  obvious 
that  within  a  number  of  our  Southern  States  that  is  precisely 
what  the  negro  is.  He  is  so  not  primarily  as  the  result  of  politi- 
cal proscription,  but  simply  because  he  is  so.  A  race  which,  while 


696  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

numbering  from  30  to  50  per  cent  of  the  population,  contributes 
but  4  or  5  per  cent  of  the  direct  taxes  of  the  State,  is  as  yet  in  an 
economic  status  which  does  not  square  with  those  industrial  as- 
sumptions which  are  as  important  as  the  political  assumptions  of 
a  genuinely  democratic  order.  The  elementary  contradiction  of 
our  situation  lies,  therefore,  just  here  —  in  the  very  presence 
within  our  life  of  the  vast  numbers  of  a  backward  and  essentially 
unassimilable  people. 

In  the  years  following  the  Civil  War  the  North  asserted, 
sometimes  with  a  ruthless  impatience  and  often  through  unworthy 
instruments,  but  with  the  sincere  conviction  of  the  masses  of  her 
people,  that  the  actual  political  administration  of  the  Southern 
States  must  be  squared  with  the  democratic  assumptions  of  the 
Constitution.  And  the  North  was  right.  The  South  contended, 
upon  the  other  hand,  that  where  the  choice  must  be  made  be- 
tween civilization  and  democracy,  between  public  order  and  a 
particular  form  of  public  order,  between  government  and  a  specific 
conception  of  government,  —  civilization,  order,  government  are 
primary,  and  that  any  forms  or  conceptions  of  them,  however 
sacred,  must  await  the  stable  and  efficient  reorganization  of 
social  life.  And  the  South  was  right.  It  was  opportune  for  the 
North  to  declare  that  the  freedman  could  not  protect  himself 
unless  given  the  ballot  in  the  mass ;  it  was  equally  opportune 
for  the  South  —  with  whole  States  where  the  negroes  were  a 
majority,  with  many  counties  where  the  number  of  black  men  was 
treble  the  number  of  white  men  —  to  declare  that  the  supreme 
question  was  not  the  protection  of  the  negro  but  the  protection 
of  society  itself ;  that  white  supremacy,  at  that  stage  in  the  de- 
velopment of  the  South,  was  necessary  to  the  supremacy  of 
intelligence,  administrative  capacity  and  public  order,  and  involved 
even  the  existence  of  those  economic  and  civic  conditions  upon 
which  the  progress  of  the  negro  was  itself  dependent.  And  here, 
also,  the  South  was  right. 

The  South  was  right  and  the  North  was  right.  The  North 
was  strong  and  the  South  was  weak.  The  North  imposed  the 
forms  of  democracy.  The  South  clung  to  the  substance  of 
government. 


THE  PROBLEM  697 

Yet,  because  the  very  forms  of  government  were  democratic 
and  because  these  forms  of  government  were  ruthlessly  imposed 
by  an  irresistible  and  unsympathetic  party  power,  the  South  in 
clinging  to  the  very  substance  of  civilization  was  compelled  to 
maintain  a  lie.  Up  to  this  point  the  historian  will  not  accord  to 
her  the  larger  measure  of  blame  for  the  moral  tragedy  which 
followed.  The  effort,  however,  to  avert  fraud  and  ignorance  at 
one  door  admitted  them  at  another.  The  effort  to  prevent  the 
demoralization  of  government  resulted  —  as  has  been  suggested 
—  in  the  compromise  of  all  the  safeguards  of  the  suffrage.  The 
growing  youth  of  the  South  became  habitually  familiar  with  ever 
lowering  political  standards,  as  the  subterfuges  which  were  first 
employed  against  the  black  man  came  to  be  employed  between  white 
men  in  the  struggle  of  faction  against  faction  within  the  party. 
The  better  heart  of  the  South  now  rose  in  protest.  An  unlimited 
suffrage  was  impossible,  but  the  limitation  of  the  suffrage  must 
be  established  not  by  fraud  or  force  but  under  legal  conditions, 
and  must  be  determined  by  a  fixed  and  equitable  administration. 

Thus  the  deeper  moral  significance  of  the  recent  constitutional 
amendments  of  the  Southern  States  does  not  lie  in  the  exclusion 
of  the  negro.1  The  exclusion  of  the  negro  had  long  since  been 
accomplished.  It  lies  in  the  emancipation  of  the  white  man,  an 
emancipation  due  to  the  awakening  desire  to  abandon  the  estab- 
lished habits  of  fraud,  and  to  place  the  elimination  of  the  unde- 
sirable elements  of  the  suffrage  squarely  and  finally  under  the 
terms  of  law.  The  negro  has,  in  the  ultimate  result,  everything 
to  gain  from  such  a  course.  Temporarily  he  must  suffer  the 
consequences  of  an  undemocratic  adjustment  to  democratic  condi- 
tions, an  adjustment  due  primarily  to  no  willfulness  of  the  white 
man  at  the  South  and  to  no  apathy  of  the  white  man  at  the 
North,  but  to  the  contradiction  presented  by  his  presence  in  the 
Nation.  There  are  always  disadvantages  in  securing  for  any 
adjustment  a  legal  status  through  illegal  means,  and  the  direct 
elimination  of  all  the  undesirable  elements  of  voting  age  might 

1  The  amendments  here  referred  to  are  those  prescribing  property  or  literacy 
qualifications  for  the  franchise  ;  also  those  embodying  the  so-called  "  grandfather 
clause." —  ED. 


698  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

have  seemed  a  comparatively  simple  undertaking.  Had  the  negro 
masses  presented  the  only  illiterate  elements,  that  method  might 
have  been  pursued.  But  there  were  two  defective  classes  —  the 
unqualified  negroes  of  voting  age  and  the  unqualified  white  men. 
Both  could  not  be  dropped  at  once.  A  working  constitution  is 
not  an  a  priori  theoretic  creation  ;  it  must  pass  the  people.  The 
unqualified  white  men  of  voting  age  might  be  eliminated  by 
gradual  process,  but  they  must  first  be  included  in  the  partner- 
ship of  reorganization.  Such  a  decision  was  a  political  necessity. 
They  had  been  fused  —  by  their  participation  in  the  military 
struggle  of  the  Confederacy  and  by  their  growing  participation  in 
the  industrial  and  political  power  of  the  South — into  the  conscious 
and  dominant  life  of  the  State.  Many  of  them  possessed  large 
political  experience  and  political  faculties  of  an  unusual  order. 
Moreover  — •-  and  we  touch  here  upon  a  far-reaching  consideration 
-  no  amended  Constitution,  no  suffrage  reform,  no  legal  status 
for  a  saner  and  purer  political  administration,  was  possible  without 
their  votes.  They  held  the  key  to  the  political  situation  —  with 
all  its  moral  and  social  issues  —  and  they  demanded  terms. 

Terms  were  given  them.1  Under  skillfully  drawn  provisions 
the  mass  of  illiterate  negro  voters  were  deprived  of  suffrage  and 
the  then  voting  white  population  —  with  certain  variously  defined 
exceptions  —  was  permitted  to  retain  the  ballot.  Care  was  taken, 
however,  that  all  the  rising  generation  and  all  future  generations 
of  white  voters  should  be  constrained  to  accept  the  suffrage  test, 
a  test  applicable,  therefore,  after  a  brief  fixed  period,  to  white 
and  black  alike.  Such  is  the  law.2 

1  In  Alabama  the  Democratic  State  Convention  went  so  far  as  to  pledge  that 
no  white  man  would  be  disfranchised  "except  for  infamous  crime."    In  criticism 
of  this  pledge  the  writer  pointed  out  that  its  fulfillment  would  leave  the  ballot  in 
the  hands  of  all  the  white  vagrancy,  perjury,  and  bribery  of  the  State — as  these 
offenses  were  not  then  "  infamous  "  under  the  code  —  and  would  be  contrary  to 
the  permanent  interests  of  both  races.    The  Constitutional  Convention,  largely  at 
the  suggestion  of  the  Press  Association  of  Alabama,  practically  ignored  any  literal 
interpretation  of  the  unfortunate  pledge,  and  the  completed  instrument  did,  in 
effect,  result  in  the  disfranchisement  of  a  large  number  of  white  voters. 

2  \o  attempt  is  here  made  to  distinguish  between  the  suffrage  provisions  of 
the  different  States.    A  statement  of  these  provisions  in  detail,  together  with  a 
discussion  of  some  of  the  current  proposals  of  federal  policy,  must  be  reserved 
for  a  later  volume. 


THE  PROBLEM  699 

Lest,  however,  its  technical  and  more  strictly  political  provisions 
should  be  declared  unconstitutional,  its  practical  administration 
is  placed  in  the  charge  of  boards  of  registrars,  having  a  large 
discretionary  power  in  the  application  of  the  law,  and  thus  —  by 
the  acceptance  or  rejection  of  candidates  for  registration  —  actu- 
ally choosing  and  creating  the  permanent  electorate  of  the  State. 
A  system  of  appeals  has  been  provided,  and  in  a  number  of 
test  cases  white  juries  have  shown  themselves  willing  to  reverse 
the  adverse  decision  of  the  registrars,  and  to  return  a  verdict 
in  the  interest  of  negro  applicants ;  but  the  system  —  as  a  sys- 
tem —  is  manifestly  subject  to  grave  abuses.  If  it  be  used  as  a 
responsible  instrument  for  the  fair  and  equitable  administration 
of  the  law,  it  may  prove  an  honorable  and  effective  way  out  of 
an  intolerable  situation. 

The  essential  principles  involved,  apart  from  all  the  exaspera- 
tions of  the  discussion  that  has  gathered  about  the  National  Amend- 
ments, are,  however,  but  the  elementary  principles  of  experience 
itself.  In  an  open  letter  to  the  Constitutional  Convention  of 
Alabama,  they  were  thus  expressed : 

Southern  sentiment  will  not  approve  the  disfranchisement  of  the  illiterate 
Confederate  soldier.  In  any  civilization  there  is  a  deep  and  rightful  regard  for 
the  man  who  has  fought  in  the  armies  of  the  State.  But,  with  that  exception, 
the  State  must  eventually  protect  itself,  and  protect  the  interests  of  both  races, 
by  the  just  application  of  the  suffrage  test  to  the  white  and  black  alike.  The 
South  must,  of  course,  secure  the  supremacy  of  intelligence  and  property. 
This  we  shall  not  secure,  however,  if  we  begin  with  the  bald  declaration  that 
the  negro  is  to  be  refused  the  suffrage  although  he  have  both  intelligence  and 
property,  and  that  the  illiterate  white  man  is  to  be  accorded  the  suffrage  although 
he  have  neither.  Such  a  policy,  would,  upon  its  face,  sustain  the  charge  that 
we  are  not  really  interested  in  the  supremacy  of  intelligence  and  property,  but 
solely  in  the  selfish  and  oppressive  supremacy  of  a  particular  race. 

Such  a  course,  through  its  depressing  influence  upon  the  educational  and 
industrial  ambitions  of  the  negro,  would  but  increase  his  idleness  and  lawlessness, 
and  work  injustice  to  the  negro  and  to  the  State.  Take  out  of  his  life  all  incen- 
tive to  the  franchise,  and  you  will  partly  destroy  his  interest  in  the  acquisition 
of  knowledge  and  of  property,  because  no  people  will,  in  the  long  run,  accept 
as  a  working  principle  of  life  the  theory  of  taxation  without  representation.  I 
do  not  think  the  negro  will  riot  or  rebel,  but  I  do  think  he  will  be  discouraged 
in  the  task  of  acquiring  something  for  the  State  to  tax.  It  is  not  merely  a 
question  of  justice  to  the  negro.  It  is  a  question  of  enlightened  self-interest 


700  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

No  State  can  live  and  thrive  under  the  incubus  of  an  unambitious,  uneducated, 
unindustrious,  and  nonproperty-holding  population.  Put  the  privilege  of  suf- 
frage among  the  prizes  of  legitimate  ambition,  and  you  have  blessed  both  the 
negro  and  the  State. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  accept  the  administration  of  an  educational  and 
property  test  which  is  to  enfranchise  the  negro  on  his  acceptance  of  its  provi- 
sions, and  is  to  enfranchise  the  white  man  whether  he  accepts  them  or  not, 
we  shall  have  adopted  a  measure  which  will  be  an  injustice  to  the  white  citizen- 
ship of  the  South.  It  will  be  an  injustice  to  the  white  man  for  the  reason  that 
it  places  for  the  negro  a  premium  upon  knowledge  and  property  —  makes  for 
him  a  broader  incentive  to  the  acquisition  of  an  education  and  a  home,  leaves 
the  white  boy  without  such  incentive,  makes  the  ballot  as  cheap  in  his  hands 
as  ignorance  and  idleness,  and  through  indifference  to  the  God-given  rela- 
tion between  fitness  and  reward,  tempts  the  race  which  is  supreme  to  base  its 
supremacy  more  and  more  upon  force  rather  than  upon  merit. 

No  one  shall  justly  accuse  me  of  wanting  to  put  the  negro  over  the  white 
man.  If  anything,  however,  could  bring  about  that  impossible  result,  it  would 
be  the  imposition  of  a  suffrage  test  for  the  negro  without  the  application  of  the 
same  test  to  the  white  man.  Such  action  will  increase  for  the  negro  the  incen- 
tives to  an  education,  to  industry,  and  to  good  behavior ;  and  leave  the  white 
man  without  the  spur  of  those  incentives.  Whatever  such  a  course  may  be,  in 
relation  to  the  humbler  classes  of  our  white  people,  it  is  not  statesmanship.  I 
do  not  assume  that  the  average  illiterate  negro  has  the  political  capacity  of  the 
average  illiterate  white  man.  The  illiterate  white  man  at  the  South  has  attained 
—  through  the  genius  of  race  and  the  training  of  generations  - —  more  political 
capacity  than  many  a  literate  negro.  Nor  is  illiteracy  a  crime ;  but  literacy  is 
a  duty.  Old  conditions  are  passing  away.  The  white  man  of  the  future  who 
would  claim  the  political  capacity  to  vote  must  exercise  enough  political  capac- 
ity to  qualify.  The  obligation  to  qualify  is  an  obligation  of  helpfulness.  No 
one  is  a  true  friend  to  our  white  people  who  increases  for  the  negro  the  en- 
couragements and  attractions  of  progress  and  refuses  those  incentives  and 
encouragements  to  the  children  of  the  white  man.  I  am  quite  sure  that  any 
suffrage  test  which  establishes  for  the  negro  an  incentive  to  education  and 
property,  and  which  makes  the  ballot  in  the  hands  of  our  white  population 
as  free  as  ignorance  and  thriftlessness,  will  serve,  permanently,  to  injure  the 
stronger  race  rather  than  the  weaker. 

To  the  white  boy  such  a  provision  is  an  insult  as  well  as  an  injustice,  for 
the  reason  that  it  assumes  his  need  of  an  adventitious  advantage  over  the  negro. 
For  us  to  ask  the  negro  boy  to  submit  to  a  test  which  we  are  unwilling  to  apply 
to  our  own  sons,  would  be,  in  my  judgment,  a  reflection  upon  the  capacity  of 
our  white  population  ;  and  our  people,  wherever  it  may  be  attempted  by  the  poli- 
tician of  the  hour,  will  come  so  to  regard  it.  The  absolute  supremacy  of  intel- 
ligence and  property,  secured  through  a  suffrage  test  that  shall  be  evenly  and 


THE  PROBLEM  701 

equally  applicable  in  theory  and  in  fact  to  white  and  black  —  this  will  be  the 
ultimate  solution  of  the  South  for  the  whole  vexed  question  of  political  privilege.1 

That  this  faith  was  not  wholly  justified  by  the  issue  of  the 
Alabama  Convention  need  not  obscure  the  fact  that  the  final 
proposals  of  the  Convention  were  far  more  conservative,  far 
more  truly  democratic,  than  at  first  seemed  probable  or  possible. 
The  "  temporary  plan"  with  its  intended  inequalities  has  already 
passed  away.  The  permanent  plan  with  its  just  and  equal  provi- 
sions is  still,  however,  under  the  administration  —  as  in  Mississippi 
—  of  a  system  of  election  boards. 

If  these  boards  of  registrars  —  the  essential  and  distinctive  pro- 
vision in  the  suffrage  system  of  the  South  —  be  administered  arbi- 
trarily and  unfairly,  if  they  perpetuate  the  moral  confusion  and  the 
debasing  traditions  which  they  were  intended  to  supplant,  then  the 
South  will  stand  condemned  both  to  the  world  and  to  herself.  She 
will  have  defeated  the  purpose  of  her  own  deepest  political  and 
moral  forces.  But  let  no  one  assume  that  such  a  result  is  now  in 
evidence.  There  have  been  many  instances  of  needless  and  inten- 
tional injustice.  There  are,  upon  the  other  hand,  many  evidences 
which  indicate  that  while  the  old  habits  have  widely  affected  the 
immediate  action  of  the  registrars,  there  is  a  growing  disposition 
toward  just  administration,  a  disposition  to  exclude  the  unqualified 
white  man  and  to  admit  the  qualified  negro  to  the  ballot.2 

A  dogmatic  impatience  will  avail  nothing.  The  Nation  owes 
to  the  South  an  adequate  opportunity  for  the  trial  of  the  difficult 

1  From  An  Open  Letter  to  the  Constitutional  Convention  of  Alabama,  by 
Edgar  Gardner  Murphy,  Montgomery,  Ala.,  April,  1901. 

2  According  to  the  Secretary  of  State  for  Mississippi  more  than  15,000  negroes 
are  already  registered  there   as   voters ;   in   Virginia   the   number   registered   is 
approximately  23,000;    in  South  Carolina,  22,000;    in  Louisiana,  6400;    in  North 
Carolina,  6250.    In  the  latter  State,  as  well  as  in  Alabama,  many  negroes  have 
been  discouraged  from  offering  to  register  by  reason  of  the  fact  that  the  State 
organization  of  the  party  with  which  they  have  been  associated  recently  refused 
to  admit  even  their  most  respected  representatives  to  its  Conventions.   Large  num- 
bers have  also  refrained  from  registration  because  of  their  unwillingness  to  meet 
the  poll-tax  requirement.   The  interest  of  the  masses  of  the  negroes  in  things 
political  has,  for  quite  different  reasons,  been  much  exaggerated  by  the  represent- 
atives of  both  political  parties. 


702  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

experiment  which  she  has  undertaken.  Adequate  results,  a  full 
determination  of  success  or  failure,  cannot  be  attained  in  five 
years  or  in  ten.  All  criticism  of  the  actual  political  readjustment 
of  the  South  should,  moreover,  be  positive  as  well  as  negative,  and 
adverse  discussion  should  deal  sympathetically  and  constructively 
with  the  question,  "  If  not  this,  what  ?  "  What  is  the  alternative  ? 
One  must  recur  again  and  again  to  the  thought  that  the  fun- 
damental embarrassments  lie  in  the  elementary  conditions  that 
precede  all  the  evils  and  all  the  remedies.  Partially  anomalous 
remedies  will  always  arise  out  of  essentially  anomalous  conditions. 
The  task  is  so  complex,  the  difficulties  are  so  inscrutably  for- 
midable, the  issues  —  involving  all  the  deepest  and  most  fateful 
passions  of  races  and  parties  —  are  so  far-reaching,  that  one  may 
well  pause  before  attempting  prematurely  to  substitute  for  a  pending 
policy  of  extrication  a  policy  —  even  though  logically  complete 
—  which  may  be  based  upon  more  consistent  but  perhaps  more 
academic  conceptions  of  public  right.  As  one  who  vigorously 
opposed  the  imposition  of  unequal  or  uneven  tests  the  author 
feels  that  he  may  fitly  say  that  there  would  be  nothing  gained 
and  much  lost  by  any  return  to  older  conditions,  and  that  the 
whole  Southern  readjustment,  whatever  its  theoretic  inconsistencies, 
should  be  accorded  a  reasonable  trial. 

The  situation  presents  issues  for  which  men  upon  either  side 
have  often  been  willing  to  die.  But  for  strong  men  it  is  some- 
times easier  to  die  than  to  wait.  The  need  of  the  present  is  not 
martyrdom,  with  all  its  touching  and  tragic  splendor,  but  just  a 
little  patience.  Human  nature  is  everywhere  essentially  the  same. 
No  movement  of  our  human  life  can  long  support  its  own  mo- 
mentum, or  conserve  its  own  integrity,  if  it  assume  an  irrational 
or  unrighteous  form.  Political  inequalities  will  not  endure.  With 
time,  with  reason,  with  patience,  the  moral  forces  of  the  South 
can  accomplish  something  which  all  the  enactments  and  threaten- 
ing of  the  Nation  can  delay  but  cannot  produce,  —  an  equitable 
public  temper,  —  with  which  imperfect  laws  are  just,  and  without 
which  Utopia  itself  would  be  but  an  institutional  futility.  God 
has  left  no  corner  of  the  world  without  certain  of  the  resident 
forces  of  self-correction.  The  South  feels,  and  feels  justly,  that 


THE  PROBLEM  703 

in  the  view  of  history  she  has  dealt  as  scrupulously  as  the  North 
with  the  literal  obligations  of  the  Constitution,  and  that  in  the 
travail  of  her  extrication  from  an  intolerable  situation,  her  policy 
is  now  entitled  to  considerate  and  adequate  trial.  She  has  given 
her  own  welfare  as  hostage  in  pledge  for  her  sincerity.  With 
patience,  and  with  the  rapidly  increasing  educational  and  indus- 
trial quickening  of  the  South,  there  is  arising  within  her  popular 
life,  a  clearer  outlook,  a  saner  Americanism,  a  freer  and  juster 
civic  sense  —  and  these  are,  at  last,  the  only  ultimate  security  of 
our  constitutional  assumptions. 

The  practical  situation  presents,  not  a  problem  of  theoretic 
politics,  sociology,  or  ethics.  It  is  a  problem  of  flesh  and  blood, 
the  elements  of  which  are  men  and  women  and  little  children ; 
the  issues  of  which  lie  not  in  the  cheap  and  passing  advantage 
of  factions  and  parties  but  in  the  happiness  or  the  wretchedness 
of  millions  of  our  human  kind.  It  is  in  many  of  its  aspects  the 
greatest,  the  most  difficult,  problem  in  American  life  —  a  problem 
all  the  greater  because,  North  as  well  as  South,  the  forces  of 
race  prejudice  and  of  commercial  and  political  self -absorption  are 
constantly  and  impatiently  putting  it  out  of  sight.  But  it  is  here. 
It  is  the  problem  of  taking  those  institutions  and  those  principles 
which  are  the  flowering  of  the  political  consciousness  of  the 
most  politically  efficient  of  all  the  races  of  mankind  —  institutions 
and  principles  to  which  even  the  Anglo-Saxon  is  unequal  save 
in  theory  —  and  securing  the  just  coordination  under  them  of 
this  stronger  race  which  has  hardly  tried  them  with  a  race  which 
had  never  dreamed  them,  a  race  which,  with  all  its  virtues,  is 
socially  and  politically  almost  the  least  efficient  of  the  families  of 
men  ;  — two  races  separated  socially  by  antipathies  of  blood,  sep- 
arated politically  by  the  supposed  division  of  political  interests ; 
the  weaker  distrusting  the  stronger,  the  stronger  distrusting  the 
weaker ;  each  knowing  the  other  at  its  worst  rather  than  at  its 
best,  and  each  passionately  resolved  to  be  judged  by  its  best 
rather  than  by  its  worst ;  a  situation  of  actual,  grotesque,  far- 
reaching  inequalities  projected  under  the  conditions  of  a  dem- 
ocratic order  and  continued  under  the  industrial  and  political 
assumption  of  the  parity  of  classes.  A  great  problem !  A 


704  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

problem  demanding  many  things  —  the  temper  of  justice,  un- 
selfishness, truth  —  but  demanding  most  of  all  a  patient  wisdom, 
a  wise,  conserving,  and  healing  patience  —  the  patience  of  thought 
and  of  work ;  not  the  patience  of  the  opportunist  but  the  deeper 
patience  of  the  patriot.  Indeed,  if  one  may  speak  of  it  with 
anything  of  hopefulness,  it  is  only  because  this  problem  has  now 
come  for  its  adjustment  into  a  day  when  a  deeper  sense  of  na- 
tionality has  merged  within  its  broader  sympathies  and  its  juster 
perspective  the  divisive  standpoints  of  the  past,  bringing  into  the 
Nation's  single  and  inclusive  fate  a  new  North  as  well  as  a  new 
South,  a  South  with  its  boundaries  at  the  Lakes  and  the  St. 
Lawrence,  a  North  with  its  boundaries  through  the  fields  and 
the  pines  of  a  reunited  country  at  the  waters  of  the  Southern  Gulf. 

67.  A  SOUTHERN   SENATOR'S  VIEWS  ON  THE  RACE  SITUA- 
TION  IN  THE   SOUTH1 

The  negro  as  a  race,  in  all  the  ages  of  the  world,  has  never 
shown  sustained  power  of  self-development.  He  is  not  endowed 
with  the  creative  faculty.  "  God  planted  the  Egyptian  and  the 
negro  side  by  side  in  the  fabled  Valley  of  the  Nile  with  equal 
opportunites.  The  earth  was  new ;  all  things  lay  before  all  men  ; 
no  man  could  borrow  from  his  neighbor,  because  his  neighbor 
had  naught  to  lend ;  no  man  could  learn  from  his  neighbor, 
because  his  neighbor  had  naught  to  teach.  Here  was  the  virgin 
earth,  fresh  and  moist  from  the  hand  of  the  Creator ;  there  was 
the  mysterious  sea,  and  far  away  in  the  shining  spaces  of  the" 
night  lay  the  uncounted  stars  with  their  lessons  spread.  All  of 
these  were  to  be  conquered.  The  door  of  hope  stood  broadly 
open  and  no  color  line  was  drawn." 

But  the  door  of  hope  might  have  remained  closed  so  far  as 
the  progress  the  negro  was  to  make  for  himself  was  concerned. 

1  By  James  K.  Vardaman,  senator  from  Mississippi.  Condensed  from  a  speech 
in  the  United  States  Senate,  Feb.  6,  1914.  The  Senate  had  under  consideration 
the  bill  (II.  R.  7951)  to  provide  for  cooperative  agricultural  extension  work 
between  the  agricultural  colleges  in  the  several  States  receiving  the  benefits  of 
an  act  of  Congress  approved  July  2,  1862,  and  of  acts  supplementary  thereto,  and 
the  United  States  Department  of  Agriculture. 


THE  PROBLEM  705 

He  has  never  created  for  himself  any  civilization.  He  has  never 
risen  above  the  government  of  a  club.  He  has  never  written  a 
language.  His  achievements  in  architecture  are  limited  to  the 
thatched-roofed  hut  or  a  hole  in  the  ground.  No  monuments 
have  been  builded  by  him  to  body  forth  and  perpetuate  in  the 
memory  of  posterity  the  virtues  of  his  ancestors. 

For  countless  ages  he  has  looked  upon  the  rolling  sea  and 
never  dreamed  of  a  sail.  In  truth,  he  has  never  progressed,  save 
and  except  when  under  the  influence  and  absolute  control  of  a 
superior  race.  His  opportunities  have  been  great.  The  negro 
helped  to  build  the  temples  of  Rameses,  he  polished  the  columns 
of  Karnak,  he  toiled  at  the  hundred-gated  Thebes,  he  was 
touched  by  the  tides  of  civilization  that  swept  across  the  East- 
ern Hemisphere  in  the  forenoon  of  the  ages,  and  yet  it  made  no 
more  impression  upon  him  as  a  race  than  a  drop  of  water  on 
the  oily  back  of  a  duck.  He  is  living  in  Africa  to-day,  in  the 
land  where  he  sprang,  indigenous,  in  substantially  the  same  con- 
dition, occupying  the  same  rude  hut,  governed  by  the  same  club, 
worshiping  the  same  fetish  that  he  did  when  the  Pharaohs  ruled 
in  Egypt.  He  has  never  had  any  civilization  except  that  which 
has  been  inculcated  by  a  superior  race.  And  it  is  a  lamentable 
fact  that  his  civilization  lasts  only  so  long  as  he  is  in  the  hands 
of  the  white  man  who  inculcates  it.  When  left  to  himself  he 
has  universally  gone  back  to  the  barbarism  of  the  jungle. 

Let  us  consider  his  condition  in  Haiti.  It  will  throw  a  flood 
of  light  upon  our  own  American  problem.  The  negro  acquired 
control  of  this  island  more  than  100  years  ago.  Thomas 
Jefferson  said :  "  This  will  test  the  negro's  capacity  for  self- 
government." 

With  his  usual  prescience  and  foresight,  Jefferson  predicted 
failure.  But  he  said :  "  Let  him  try  it.  We  will  help  him." 

Haiti  was  at  that  time  the  gem  of  the  Antilles.  The  most 
magnificent  cane  fields,  coffee  plantations,  and  fruit  groves 
graced  the  landscape  of  that  delightful  little  island.  Now  shift 
the  scene.  Look  at  Haiti  to-day,  after  100  years  of  negro  rule. 
After  100  years  of  assistance  by  the  white  man  —  assistance  with 
money,  with  example,  precept,  and  all  of  those  superior  virtues 


;o6  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

which  characterized  the  civilization  of  the  white  race,  what  do 
we  find  there  to-day  ?  Sir  Spencer  St.  John,  who  represented 
the  English  Government  at  Port  au  Prince  for  20  years,  wrote  a 
book  entitled  "  Haiti,  or  Black  Republic."  When  this  English 
officer  first  visited  Haiti  he  looked  with  compassion  upon  the 
black  man.  He  thought  he  had  been  denied  an  equal  chance  in 
the  race  of  life.  He  thought  he  had  been  the  victim  of  slavery  — 
that  the  elements  of  manhood  had  been  stifled  by  such  oppres- 
sion as  some  of  the  distinguished  Senators  on  this  floor  in  this 
debate  have  called  attention  to  as  having  been  practiced  in  the 
Southern  States  of  America.  Yes ;  he  thought  "  the  negro  was 
a  sunburned  Yankee,  who  had  not  been  given  a  square  deal." 

Sir  Spencer  St.  John  remained  as  the  representative  of  his 
Government  at  the  court  of  this  black  Republic  for  20  years.  He 
made  a  close  study  of  the  question.  He  informed  himself  as  to 
the  racial  peculiarities  of  the  negro,  and  his  testimony  to  the  world 
is  that  the  negro  is  incapable  of  self-government.  He  is  incapable 
of  sustaining  a  civilization  all  his  own.  Further,  he  says : 

After  an  experience  of  100  years  Haiti  has  proved  a  failure.  There  is  no 
semblance  of  civil  government  there,  except  in  the  seaports,  which  are  domi- 
nated by  whites  and  mulattoes. 

And  he  tells  us  further  the  disgusting  story  of  the  worship 
of  the  voodoo  and  cannibalism,  which  he  says  is  as  common 
as  their  sexual  crimes  in  the  Southern  States  of  this  Republic. 
The  United  States  Government  is  in  San  Domingo  to-day  as  the 
guardian  of  that  people,  having  sent  agents  there  to  administer 
their  public  affairs.  Now,  I  know  the  negro  has  made  a  certain 
order  of  progress  in  the  South.  He  has  acquired  property.  He 
is  acquiring  book  learning.  I  am  advised  that  there  is  a  decrease 
of  illiteracy  of  something  like  12  per  cent  in  every  decade. 
There  is  no  doubt  about  that.  But  I  am  going  to  make  a  state- 
ment which,  I  dare  say,  will  astonish  some  of  the  gentlemen  who 
have  shown  such  honest  and  sincere  interest  in  the  negro's 
advancement.  While  he  has  progressed  mentally,  he  has  deteri- 
orated morally  and  physically.  It  is  a  lamentable  fact  that  as  a 
race  the  negro  in  America  is  more  criminal  to-day  than  he  was 


THE  PROBLEM  707 

in  1 86 1.  And  certain  diseases  which  were  unknown  among 
them  before  the  war  are  decimating  their  ranks,  filling  the  hospi- 
tals with  incurables  and  the  asylums  with  lunatics.  I  predict  that 
these  diseases  will  cause  a  marked  falling  off  in  the  birth  rate  in 
the  next  decade. 

And  that  is  true  of  the  negro  of  the  North,  probably  more  so 
than  it  is  of  the  negro  in  the  South.  Nobody  will  deny  that, 
that  is,  no  one  will  deny  it  who  has  any  reliable  information  on  the 
subject.  The  white  people  of  Pennsylvania  are  friendly  to  the 
negro.  There  he  has  been  given  every  opportunity  that  the  pub- 
lic schools  and  colleges  afford  for  his  moral  and  mental  advance- 
ment, and  yet,  I  am  advised,  that  while  he  is  only  2\  per  cent 
of  the  total  population  of  the  State  of  "  Brotherly  Love," 
the  negro  race  furnished  17  per  cent  of  the  male  criminals 
and  30  per  cent  of  the  female  criminals.  In  the  city  of 
Washington,  a  perfect  haven  for  him,  where  special  distinction 
has  been  shown  him  because  of  his  "race,  color,  or  previous  con- 
dition of  servitude,"  here  in  this  city,  where  he  has  been  treated 
as  a  hothouse  plant,  where  he  has  enjoyed  all  the  advantages  of 
social,  official,  industrial,  and  political  equality,  we  find  his 
race  after  40  years  of  freedom,  while  only  28  per  cent  of  the 
total  population,  furnishing  68  per  cent  of  the  grist  for  the 
criminal  courts  to  grind.  It  is  not  uncommon  here,  at  the  seat 
of  government,  where  all  of  these  special  favors  have  been 
accorded  the  negro  —  I  repeat,  it  is  not  uncommon  —  to  find 
the  pages  of  the  morning  papers  blurred  with  the  account  of 
assaults  perpetrated  by  negroes  on  white  women  on  the  main 
thoroughfares  of  the  city. 

I  do  not  want  to  do  anything  that  will  arrest  the  negro's  prog- 
ress. I  would  not  raise  my  hand  against  his  material  advance- 
ment. I  believe  that  I  am  his  real  friend.  I  know  him  ;  I 
understand  him  in  all  the  relations  of  life.  I  have  lived  with 
him  from  my  infancy.  I  was  nursed  by  an  old  black  mammy, 
the  recollection  of  whose  tender  ministrations  to  me  are  among 
the  sweetest  assets  of  my  life.  A  clear  old  negro  woman  nursed 
every  one  of  our  babies.  A  most  faithful,  trustworthy,  devoted 
servant  and  friend  was  this  good  old  woman.  I  never  permit  an 


708  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

opportunity  to  pass  to  pay  the  tribute  of  my  love  and  respect  for 
her  memory.  As  governor  of  my  State  I  am  sure  that  I  exerted 
myself  as  much  to  protect  the  negro  in  the  enjoyment  of  his  life, 
his  liberty,  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  and  the  products  of  his  own 
toil  as  any  executive  in  America  has  ever  done.  He  does  not 
vote  much  in  Mississippi,  but  I  really  think  that  he  votes  more 
than  he  ought  to  vote,  if  he  votes  at  all.  I  do  not  think  it 
was  ever  intended  by  the  Creator  that  the  two  races  should  live 
together  upon  equal  terms  —  enjoy  equal  political  and  social  ad- 
vantages. One  or  the  other  must  rule.  The  people  of  the  South 
tried  to  share  with  the  negro  in  the  government  of  the  country 
after  the  war,  but  the  negro  declined  to  share  with  the  white  man. 
Black  heels  rested  cruelly  upon  white  necks  for  many  years 
after  the  close  of  the  war.  The  white  man  endured  the  negro's 
misrule,  his  insolence,  impudence,  and  infamy.  He  suffered 
his  criminal  incapacity  to  govern  until  the  public  domain  had 
been  well-nigh  squandered  and  the  public  treasury  looted.  We 
saw  the  civilization  reared  by  the  genius  of  our  fathers,  glori- 
fied and  cemented  by  their  sacred  blood,  vanishing  from  the 
earth,  and  by  means,  I  will  not  say  in  this  presence,  fair,  but 
by  means  sufficient,  we  invoked  the  law  of  self-preservation  ;  we 
arose  in  the  might  of  an  outraged  race,  and  as  the  Saviour 
scourged  the  money  changers  from  the  temple,  so  the  southern 
white  man  drove  from  power  the  scalawag,  the  carpetbagger,  and 
the  incompetent  negro. 

If  in  the  providence  of  God  the  negro  may  make  progress 
sufficient  to  justify  the  American  people  in  giving  him  the 
franchise,  that  time  has  not  yet  arrived;  I  believe  the  Republican 
Party  is  getting  about  as  tired  of  the  negro  in  politics,  and  I 
believe  the  members  of  that  party  in  this  Chamber,  if  they  were 
candid,  would  admit  that  they  are  about  as  tired  of  dealing  with 
him  in  politics  as  the  Democrats  are.  I  was  very  much  gratified 
to  notice  at  one  of  the  recent  councils  of  the  leaders  of  the 
Republican  Party  that  you  are  trying  to  devise  ways  and  means 
by  which  you  may  get  rid  of  the  pernicious  vote  of  the  southern 
negro  in  your  national  conventions.  You  ought  to  do  it.  It  is  not 
creditable  to  any  party  to  pay  the  price  you  have  to  pay  for  it. 


THE  PROBLEM  709 

God  Almighty  never  intended  that  the  negro  should  share 
with  the  white  man  in  the  government  of  this  country ;  and  you 
cannot  improve  upon  the  plans  of  God  Almighty  or  defeat  His 
purposes,  either,  by  legislative  enactments.'  Do  not  forget  that. 
It  matters  not  what  constitutions  may  contain  or  statutes  provide, 
wherever  the  negro  is  in  sufficient  numbers  to  imperil  the  white 
man's  civilization  or  question  the  white  man's  supremacy  the 
white  man  is  going  to  find  some  way  around  the  difficulty.  And 
that  is  just  as  true  in  the  North  as  it  is  in  the  South.  You  need 
not  deceive  yourselves  about  that.  The  feeling  against  the  negro 
in  Illinois  when  he  gets  in  the  white  man's  way  is  quite  as 
strong,  more  bitter,  less  regardful  of  the  negro's  feelings  and 
conditions  than  it  is  in  Mississippi.  And  that  is  true  of  every 
other  Northern  State. 

I  am  not  the  negro's  enemy.  I  know  what  is  best  for  him. 
I  think  I  can  measure  his  productive  capacity.  I  know  the  influ- 
ences that  move  him.  I  am  familiar  with  the  currents  of  passion 
which  sweep  through  his  savage  blood.  I  understand  his  hates, 
his  jealousies,  and  his  attachments.  In  a  word,  I  think  I  know 
him  as  he  really  is.  And  knowing  him,  I  believe  I  know  what  is 
best  for  him.  You  cannot  measure  the  negro  by  the  standard  by 
which  you  would  measure  accurately  the  white  man.  He  is  different 
from  the  white  man  physically,  morally,  and  mentally.  The  pure- 
blooded  negro  is  without  gratitude.  He  does  not  harbor  revenge. 
He  is  not  immoral  —  he  is  unmoral.  I  have  never  known  one 
who  ever  felt  the  guilt  of  sin,  the  goading  of  an  outraged  con- 
science, or  the  binding  force  of  a  moral  obligation.  The  pure- 
blooded  negro  reaches  mental  maturity  soon  after  he  passes  the 
period  of  puberty.  The  cranial  sutures  become  ossified  by  the 
time  he  reaches  20  years  of  age,  and  it  is  not  uncommon  to  find 
one  who  reads  fluently  at  1 5  years  of  age  not  to  know  a  letter  in 
the  book  at  the  age  of  25  or  30.  It  was  this  physical  difference 
which  Mr.  Lincoln  had  in  mind  when  he  said  :  "  There  is  a 
physical  difference  and  an  impassable  gulf  between  the  two  races." 
Lombroso,  the  great  Italian  scientist,  used  this  language:  "Just 
at  that  moment  when  the  Caucasian  intellect  is  spreading  its  wings 
for  a  more  daring  flight  the  negro  closes  up  and  comes  back." 


710  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

No,  Mr.  President,  the  laws  suited  for  the  white  race  are  not 
adaptable  for  the  government  of  the  negro.  "  The  heir  of  all  the 
ages  in  the  foremost  files  of  time  "  cannot  progress  if  restrained 
by  statutes  intended'  for  the  government  of  the  most  backward 
and  inferior  of  all  the  races  of  men.  Nor  can  you  by  law  lift  the 
negro  and  hold  him  to  the  high  standard  which  you  demand 
that  the  white  man  live  upon.  .  .  . 

The  negro  started  life  with  equal  opportunity  with  the  Cauca- 
sian. Neither  had  anything  to  borrow  from  or  to  lend  to  the 
other.  The  white  man  evolved  the  civilization  that  glorifies  the 
beginning  of  the  twentieth  century.  The  negro  remained  station- 
ary. If  you  would  have  the  negro  progress,  if  you  would  promote 
his  material  interests  by  legislation,  I  submit  to  you  that  the  best 
way  to  do  it  is  to  bring  about  cordial  cooperation,  invoke  the 
assistance  of  the  white  man.  You  cannot  do  it  in  any  other  way. 
It  is  true  in  the  North,  it  is  true  in  the  South,  it  is  true  in  the 
East,  it  is  true  in  the  West.  .  .  . 

I  agree  with  the  Senator  [Senator  Clapp]  that  the  negro  has 
progressed  mentally.  He  is,  as  I  said  a  moment  ago,  reducing 
the  percentage  of  illiteracy  between  10  and  12  per  cent  every 
decade.  A  larger  majority  of  the  young  negroes  in  Mississippi 
can  read.  We  are  furnishing  them  schools  which  run  from  four 
to  nine  months  in  the  year,  and  the  white  man  pays  the  bill. 
The  negro  has  had  opportunity  that  was  never  before  afforded 
to  an  inferior  race  at  somebody  else's  expense  ;  he  is  acquiring 
property.  But  this  progress  is  not  making  a  better  citizen  of 
him.  You  cannot  understand  it,  but  I  tell  you  in  all  solemn 
candor  he  is  a  thousand  times  more  criminal  to-day  as  a  race 
than  he  was  in  1861. 

There  never  was  a  more  faithful,  trustworthy  protector  of  the 
southern  white  woman,  or  white  womanhood  anywhere,  than  were 
the  old  slaves  during  the  war  and  immediately  following ;  and  it 
is  a  startling  fact  that  I  am  going  to  announce  at  this  moment 
that  every  white  woman  in  the  black  belt  of  the  South  to-day 
is  living  in  a  state  of  siege.  The  sons  of  those  faithful,  well- 
behaved  servants  —  or  slaves,  if  you  prefer  —  with  all  of  their 


THE  PROBLEM  711 

superior  schoolbook  learning  and  improved  opportunities,  have 
become  the  rapist  and  the  robber.  The  care,  the  protection,  the 
safeguards  that  are  thrown  around  the  white  women  are  a  thou- 
sand times  more  rigid  —  greater  vigilance  is  kept  —  than  were 
thrown  around  our  mothers  100  years  ago  on  the  frontiers,  where 
the  wild  man  and  the  wild  beasts  roamed  at  will.  These  are 
facts,  and  you  cannot  deny  them.  The  Senator  from  Minnesota 
cannot  understand  that ;  but  if  he  should  live  in  the  black  belt 
of  the  South  for  a  little  while  —  if  his  wife  and  daughters  could 
live  there,  they  would  soon  feel  the  dampening  effect  of  that 
black  cloud  of  peril  which  hovers  over  the  devoted  head  of  every 
white  girl  and  woman  in  the  South  to-day. 

I  am  not  an  enemy  to  the  negro ;  I  want  to  educate  him  —  or 
rather  train  him  —  along  proper  lines  ;  I  want  to  train  him  in  a 
way  that  we  may  improve  his  hand  and  educate  his  heart ;  I 
want  to  build,  if  possible,  a  moral  substratum  upon  which  to  rear 
this  mental  superstructure ;  but  if  that  is  not  done,  with  his  ideas 
of  morality,  or  as  Froude,  the  historian,  would  put  it,  his  ideas 
of  "unmorality"  —when  you  enhance  his  mentality  without 
building  this  moral  substratum,  upon  which  it  is  to  rest,  you 
simply  increase  his  capacity  for  harm.  Your  education  will  only 
serve  to  make  a  less  desirable  citizen. 

I  want,  first,  to  build  the  foundation.  The  white  man  and  the 
negro  of  the  South  are  not  enemies.  They  may  be  made  so  if 
you  continue  to  insist  on  trying  to  bring  them  into  abnormal 
relationship.  The  relation  that  existed  between  them  before  and 
immediately  succeeding  the  war  was  akin  to  that  of  father  and 
son.  My  recollections  of  the  black  folk  on  the  farm  during  my 
boyhood  are  among  the  pleasant  memories  of  my  life.  The 
negroes  in  Mississippi  know  that  I  am  not  their  enemy.  I  would 
not  permit  them  to  vote,  but  I  would  protect  them  in  the  enjoy- 
ment of  their  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness  and  the 
product  of  their  toil.  And  if  the  white  people  of  the  South  are 
permitted  to  proceed  along  proper  rational  lines,  knowing  and 
recognizing  the  negro's  inferiority,  desiring,  however,  his  better- 
ment ;  if  they  are  permitted  to  work  out,  although  handicapped, 


7 12  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

as  they  are,  with  laws  which  were  conceived  in  hatred  and 
brought  forth  in  a  spasm  of  venom  and  revenge  —  if  they  are 
permitted  to  do  it,  Mr.  President,  in  their  own  proper  way,  very 
much  more  progress  will  be  made  for  the  negro's  uplifting,  for 
the  negro's  improvement  than  will  be  made  if  it  shall  be  directed 
by  men  who  do  not  know  any  more  about  it  personally  than  I  do 
about  the  political  economy  of  the  planet  Mars. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE  ECONOMIC  CONDITION  OF  THE  NEGRO 

The  economic  condition  of  the  negro  farmer,  713.  —  The  economic  future  of  the 
negro,  726.  —  City  and  country,  727.  —  Race  prejudice  a  bar  to  economic  oppor- 
tunity, 728.  —  The  question  of  negro  efficiency,  729. —  Economic  groups,  730. 

68.    THE   ECONOMIC   CONDITION   OF  THE   NEGRO   FARMER1 

Negroes  on  the  farms  may  be  divided  into  four  classes  :  own- 
ers, cash  tenants,  share  tenants,  laborers.  Share  tenants  differ 
from  the  same  class  in  the  North  in  that  work  animals  and  tools 
are  usually  provided  by  the  landlord.  Among  the  laborers  must 
also  be  included  the  families  living  on  the  rice  and  cane  planta- 
tions, who  work  for  cash  wages  but  receive  houses  and  such  per- 
quisites as  do  other  tenants  and  whose  permanence  is  more  assured 
than  an  ordinary  day  hand.  They  are  paid  in  cash,  usually 
through  a  plantation  store,  that  debts  for  provisions,  etc.,  may  be 
deducted.  Both  owners  and  tenants  find  it  generally  necessary  to 
arrange  for  advances  of  food  and  clothing  until  harvest.  The 
advances  begin  in  the  early  spring  and  continue  until  August  or 
sometimes  until  the  cotton  is  picked.  In  the  regions  east  of  the 
alluvial  lands  advances  usually  stop  by  the  first  of  August,  and  in 
the  interim  until  the  cotton  is  sold  odd  jobs  or  some  extra  labor, 
picking  blackberries  and  the  like,  must  furnish  the  support  for 
the  family.  The  landlord  may  do  the  advancing  or  some  mer- 
chant. Money  is  seldom  furnished  directly,  although  in  recent 
years  banks  are  beginning  to  loan  on  crop  liens.  The  food  sup- 
plied is  often  based  on  the  number  of  working  hands,  irrespective 
of  the  number  of  children  in  the  family.  This  is  occasionally  a 
hardship.  The  customary  ration  is  a  peck  of  corn  meal  and  three 
pounds  of  pork  per  week.  Usually  a  crop  lien  together  with  a 

1  By  Carl  Kelsey.  Adapted  from  The  Negro  Farmer,  pp.  29-32,  43-51.  Jennings 
and  Pye,  Chicago,  1903. 

713 


7 14  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

bill  of  sale  of  any  personal  property  is  given  as  security,  but  in 
some  states  landlords  have  a  first  lien  upon  all  crops  for  rent  and 
advances.  In  all  districts  the  tenant  is  allowed  to  cut  wood  for 
his  fire,  and  frequently  has  free  pasture  for  his  stock.  There  is 
much  complaint  that  when  there  are  fences  about  the  house  they 
are  sometimes  burned,  being  more  accessible  than  the  timber, 
which  may  be  at  a  distance  and  which  has  to  be  cut.  The  land- 
lords and  the  advancers  have  found  it  necessary  to  spend  a  large 
part  of  their  time  personally,  or  through  agents  called  "  riders," 
going  about  the  plantations  to  see  that  the  crops  are  cultivated. 
The  negro  knows  how  to  raise  cotton,  but  he  may  forget  to 
plow,  chop,  or  some  other  such  trifle,  unless  reminded  of  the 
necessity.  Thus  a  considerable  part  of  the  excessive  interest 
charged  the  negro  should  really  be  charged  as  wages  of  super- 
intendence. If  the  instructions  of  the  riders  are  not  followed, 
rations  are  cut  off,  and  thus  the  recalcitrant  brought  to  terms. 

For  a  long  time  rations  have  been  dealt  out  on  Saturday.  So 
Saturday  has  come  to  be  considered  a  holiday,  or  half  holiday  at 
least.  Early  in  the  morning  the  roads  are  covered  with  blacks 
on  foot,  horseback,  muleback  and  in  various  vehicles,  on  their 
way  to  the  store  or  village,  there  to  spend  the  day  loafing  about 
in  friendly  discussion  with  neighbors.  The  condition  of  the  crops 
has  little  preventive  influence,  and  the  handicap  to  successful 
husbandry  formed  by  the  habit  is  easily  perceived.  Many  efforts 
are  being  made  to  break  up  the  custom,  but  it  is  uphill  work. 
Another  habit  of  the  negro  which  militates  against  his  progress 
is  his  prowling  about  in  all  sorts  of  revels  by  night,  thereby  unfit- 
ting himself  for  labor  the  next  day.  This  trait  also  shows  forth 
the  general  thoughtlessness  of  the  negro.  His  mule  works  by 
day,  but  is  expected  to  carry  his  owner  any  number  of  miles  at 
night.  Sunday  is  seldom  a  day  of  rest  for  the  work  animals.  It 
is  a  curious  fact  that  wherever  the  negroes  are  most  numerous 
there  mules  usually  outnumber  horses.  There  are  several  reasons 
for  this.  It  has  often  been  supposed  that  mules  endure  the  heat 
better  than  horses.  This  is  questionable.  The  mule,  however,  will 
do  a  certain  amount  and  then  quit,  all  inducements  to  the  contrary 
notwithstanding.  The  horse  will  go  till  he  drops  ;  moreover,  will 


THE  ECONOMIC  CONDITION  OF  THE  NEGRO      715 

not  stand  the  abuse  which  the  mule  endures.  The  negro  does 
not  bear  a  good  reputation  for  care  of  his  animals.  He  neglects 
to  feed  and  provide  for  them.  Their  looks  justify  the  criticism. 
The  mule,  valuable  as  he  is  for  many  purposes,  is  necessarily 
more  expensive  in  the  long  run  than  a  self -perpetuating  animal. 
In  all  parts  it  is  the  custom  for  the  negroes  to  save  a  little  garden 
patch  about  the  house,  which,  if  properly  tended,  would  supply 
the  family  with  vegetables  throughout  the  year.  This  is  seldom 
the  case.  A  recent  Tuskegee  catalogue  commenting  on  this  says  : 

If  they  have  any  garden  at  all,  it  is  apt  to  be  choked  with  weeds  and  other 
noxious  growths.  With  every  advantage  of  soil  and  climate,  and  with  a  steady 
market  if  they  live  near  any  city  or  large  town,  few  of  the  colored  farmers  get 
any  benefit  from  this,  one  of  the  most  profitable  of  all  industries. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  they  care  little  for  vegetables  and  seldom 
know  how  to  prepare  them  for  the  table.  The  garden  is  regu- 
larly started  in  the  spring,  but  seldom  amounts  to  much.  I  have 
ridden  for  a  day  with  but  a  glimpse  of  a  couple  of  attempts.  As 
a  result  there  will  be  a  few  collards,  turnips,  gourds,  sweet  pota- 
toes and  beans,  but  the  mass  of  the  people  buy  the  little  they 
need  from  the  stores.  A  dealer  in  a  little  country  store  told  me 
last  summer  that  he  would  make  about  $75  an  acre  on  three 
acres  of  watermelons,  although  almost  every  purchaser  could  raise 
them  if  he  would.  In  many  regions  wild  fruits  are  abundant,  and 
blackberries  during  the  season  are  quite  a  staple,  but  they  are  sel- 
dom canned.  Some  cattle  are  kept,  but  little  butter  is  made,  and 
milk  is  seldom  on  the  bill  of  fare,  the  stock  being  sold  when  fat  (?). 

Comparing  these  negro  dietaries  with  other  dietaries  and  diet- 
ary standards,  it  will  be  seen  that  — 

(i)  The  quantities  of  protein  are  small.  Roughly  speaking,  the  food  of  these 
negroes  furnished  one  third  to  three  fourths  as  much  protein  as  are  called  for 
in  the  current  physiological  standards  and  as  are  actually  found  in  the  dietaries 
of  well-fed  whites  in  the  United  States  and  well-fed  people  in  Europe.  They 
were,  indeed,  no  larger  than  have  been  found  in  the  dietaries  of  the  very  poor 
factory  operatives  and  laborers  in  Germany  and  the  laborers  and  beggars  in  Italy. 

(2)  In  fuel  value  the  negro  dietaries  compare  quite  favorably  with  those  of 
well-to-do  people  of  the  laboring  classes  in  Europe  and  the  United  States.1 

1  Bulletin  No.  38,  Office  of  Experimental  Stations,  U.  S.  Department  of  Agri- 
culture—  a  study  of  dietaries  made  under  Tuskegee  Institute. 


716  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

This  indicates  the  ignorance  of  the  negro  regarding  the  food 
he  needs,  so  that  in  a  region  of  plenty  he  is  underfed  as  regards 
the  muscle  and  bone-forming  elements  and  overfed  so  far  as  fuel 
value  is  concerned.  One  cannot  help  asking  what  effect  a  normal 
diet  would  have  upon  the  sexual  passions.  It  is  worthy  of  notice 
that  in  the  schools  maintained  by  the  whites  there  is  relatively 
little  trouble  on  this  account.  Possibly  the  changed  life  and  food 
are  in  no  small  measure  responsible  for  the  difference. 

Under  diversified  farming  there  would  be  steady  employment 
most  of  the  year,  with  a  corresponding  increase  of  production. 
As  it  is  there  are  two  busy  seasons.  In  the  spring,  planting  and 
cultivating  cotton,  say  from  March  to  July,  and  in  the  fall,  cot- 
ton picking,  September  to  December.  The  balance  of  the  time 
the  average  farmer  does  little  work.  The  present  system  entails 
a  great  loss  of  time. 

The  absence  of  good  pastures  and  of  meadows  is  noticeable. 
This  is  also  too  true  of  white  farmers.  Yet  the  grasses  grow 
luxuriantly  and  nothing  but  custom  or  something  else  accounts 
for  their  absence  ;  the  something  else  is  cotton.  The  adaptability 
of  cotton  to  the  negro  is  almost  providential.  It  has  a  long  tap- 
root and  is  able  to  stand  neglect  and  yet  produce  a  reasonable 
crop.  The  grains,  corn  and  cane,  with  their  surface  roots,  will 
not  thrive  under  careless  handling. 

The  average  farmer  knows,  or  at  least  utilizes,  few  of  the  little 
economies  which  make  agriculture  so  profitable  elsewhere.  The 
negro  is  thus  under  a  heavy  handicap  and  does  not  get  the 
most  that  he  might  from  present  opportunities.  I  am  fully  con- 
scious that  there  are  many  farmers  who  take  advantage  of  these 
things  and  are  correspondingly  successful,  but  they  are  not  the 
average  man  of  whom  I  am  speaking.  With  this  general  state- 
ment I  pass  to  a  consideration  of  the  situation  in  the  various 
districts  before  mentioned.  .  .  . 

In  the  central  district  life  is  a  little  more  strenuous  than 
on  the  seacoast.  The  average  tenant  has  a  "  one-mule  farm," 
some  thirty  or  thirty-five  acres.  Occasionally  the  tenant  has  more 
land,  but  only  about  this  amount  is  cultivated  and  no  rent  is  paid 


THE  ECONOMIC  CONDITION  OF  THE  NEGRO      717 

for  the  balance.  The  area  of  the  land  is  usually  estimated  and 
only  rarely  is  it  surveyed.  This  land  ranges  in  value  from  $5.00 
to  $15.00  per  acre  on  the  average.  The  customary  rental  for  a 
"one-mule  farm"  is  about  two  bales  of  cotton,  whose  value  in 
recent  years  would  be  in  the  neighborhood  of  $75.00,  thus 
making  the  rental  about  $3.00  per  acre.  On  this  farm  from  four 
to  six  bales  of  cotton  are  raised.  The  soil  has  been  injured  by 
improper  tillage  and  requires  an  expenditure  of  $1.75  to  $2.00 
per  acre  for  fertilizers  if  the  best  results  are  to  be  obtained.  As 
yet  the  negroes  do  not  fully  appreciate  this.  The  farmer  secures 
advances  based  on  I  peck  of  meal  and  3  pounds  of  "  side  meat," 
fat  salt  pork,  per  week  for  each  working  hand.  About  six  dollars 
a  month  is  the  limit  for  advances,  and  as  these  are  continued  for 
only  seven  months  or  so  the  average  advance  received  is  probably 
not  far  from  $50.00  per  year.  An  advance  of  $10.00  per  month 
is  allowed  for  a  two-horse  farm.  The  advancer  obligates  himself 
to  furnish  only  necessities,  and  any  incidentals  must  be  supplied 
from  sale  of  poultry,  berries  and  the  like.  Clothing  may  often  be 
reckoned  as  an  incidental.  The  luxuries  are  bought  with  cash  or 
on  the  installment  plan  and  are  seldom  indicated  by  the  books 
of  the  merchant.  The  cost  of  the  average  weekly  advances  for 
a  family  in  1 902  was  : 

i o  pounds  meat  (salt  pork  sides)  @  13^0.     .     .     .     $1.35 

i  bushel  corn  meal .90 

i  plug  tobacco  (reckoned  a  necessity)     ....         .10 

$2.35 

Conditions  throughout  this  district  are  believed  to  be  fairly 
uniform,  but  the  following  information  was  gathered  in  Lowndes 
County,  Alabama,  so  has  closest  connection  with  the  prairie 
region  of  that  state. 

There  are  not  an  unusual  number  of  one-room  cabins.1  Out  of 
74  families,  comprising  416  people,  the  average  was  7  to  the 
room,  the  greatest  number  living  in  one  room  was  1 1 .  The 
families  were  housed  as  shown  in  the  table  on  the  next  page. 

1  The  cabins  are  built  of  both  boards  and  logs. 


7i8 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


NUMBER  OF 
FAMILIES 

NUMBER  OF 
ROOMS 

LARGEST  NUMBER  OF 
PERSONS 

AVERAGE  NUMBER  OF 
PERSONS 

17 

I 

1  1 

6 

31 

2 

12  (3  families) 

6 

16 

3 

9 

5 

7 

4 

14 

6 

3 

5 

9 

5 

Field  work  is  from  sun  to  sun  with  two  hours  or  so  rest 
at  noon.  The  man  usually  eats  breakfast  in  the  field,  the  wife 
staying  behind  to  prepare  it.  It  consists  of  pork  and  corn  bread. 
The  family  come  from  the  field  about  noon  and  have  dinner 
consisting  of  pork  and  corn  bread,  with  collards,  turnip  greens, 
roasting  ears,  etc.  At  sundown  work  stops  and  supper  is  eaten, 
the  menu  being  as  at  breakfast.  The  pork  eaten  by  the  negroes, 
it  may  be  said,  is  almost  solid  fat,  two  or  three  inches  thick, 
lean  meat  not  being  liked.  The  housewife  has  few  dishes,  the 
food  being  cooked  in  pots  or  in  small  ovens  set  among  the  ashes. 
Stoves  are  a  rarity.  Lamps  are  occasionally  used,  but  if  the 
chimney  be  broken  it  is  rarely  replaced,  the  remainder  being 
quite  good  enough  for  ordinary  purposes.  The  cabins  seldom 
have  glass  windows,  but  instead  wooden  shutters,  which  swing 
outward  on  hinges.  These  are  shut  at  night,  and  even  during  the 
hottest  summer  weather  there  is  practically  no  ventilation.  How 
it  is  endured  I  know  not,  but  the  custom  prevails  even  in  Porto 
Rico  I  am  told.  In  winter  the  cabins  are  cold.  To  meet  this  the 
thrifty  housewife  makes  bed  quilts  and  as  many  as  25  or  30  of 
these  are  not  infrequently  found  in  a  small  cabin.  The  floors  are 
rough  and  not  always  of  matched  lumber,  while  the  cabins  are 
poorly  built.  The  usual  means  of  heating,  and  cooking,  is  the  big 
fireplace.  Sometimes  the  chimney  is  built  of  sticks  daubed  over 
with  mud,  the  top  of  the  chimney  often  failing  to  reach  the  ridge 
of  the  roof.  Fires  sometimes  result.  Tables  and  chairs  are  rough 
and  rude.  Sheets  are  few,  the  mattresses  are  of  cotton,  corn 
shucks  or  pine  straw,  and  the  pillows  of  home-grown  feathers. 

The  following  regarding  the  cooking  of  the  Alabama  negro 
is  taken  from  a  letter  published  in  Bulletin  No.  38,  U.  S.  Depart- 
ment of  Agriculture,  Office  of  the  Experiment  Stations  : 


THE  ECONOMIC  CONDITION  OF  THE  NEGRO      719 

The  daily  fare  is  prepared  in  very  simple  ways.  Corn  meal  is  mixed  with 
water  and  baked  on  the  flat  surface  of  a  hoe  or  griddle.  The  salt  pork  is 
sliced  thin  and  fried  until  very  brown  and  much  of  the  grease  tried  out. 
Molasses  from  cane  or  sorghum  is  added  to  the  fat,  making  what  is  known  as 
"  sap,"  which  is  eaten  with  the  corn  bread.  Hot  water  sweetened  with  molas- 
ses is  used  as  a  beverage.  This  is  the  bill  of  fare  of  most  of  the  cabins  on 
the  plantations  of  the  "  black  belt "  three  times  a  day  during  the  year.  It  is, 
however,  varied  at  times ;  thus  collards  and  turnips  are  boiled  with  the  bacon, 
the  latter  being  used  with  the  vegetables  to  supply  fat  "  to  make  it  rich."  The 
corn-meal  bread  is  sometimes  made  into  so-called  "  cracklin  bread,"  and  is 
prepared  as  follows :  A  piece  of  fat  bacon  is  fried  until  it  is  brittle ;  it  is  then 
crushed  and  mixed  with  corn  meal,  water,  soda,  and  salt  and  baked  in  an  oven 
over  the  fireplace.  ...  One  characteristic  of  the  cooking  is  that  all  meats 
are  fried  or  otherwise  cooked  until  they  are  crisp.  Observation  among  these 
people  reveals  the  fact  that  very  many  of  them  suffer  from  indigestion  in 
some  form. 

As  elsewhere  the  advances  are  supplied  by  the  planter  or  some 
merchant.  The  legal  rate  of  interest  is  8  per  cent,  but  no  negro 
ever  borrows  money  at  this  rate.  Ten  per  cent  per  year  is  con- 
sidered cheap,  while  on  short  terms  the  rate  is  often  10  per 
cent  per  week.  The  average  tenant  pays  from  12.5  per  cent 
to  15  per  cent  for  his  advances,  which  are  sold  at  an  average 
of  25  per  cent  higher  than  cash  prices  on  the  average.  To 
avoid  any  possible  trouble  it  is  quite  customary  to  reckon  the 
interest  and  then  figure  this  into  the  face  of  the  note  so  that 
none  can  tell  either  the  principal  or  the  rate.  Below  is  an  actual 
copy  of  such  a  note,  the  names  being  changed  : 

$22.00.  Calhoun,  Alabama,  June  2,  1900. 

On  the  first  day  of  October,  1900,  I  promise  to  pay  to  the  order  of  A.  B. 
See  Twenty  Two  Dollars  at 

Value  received. 

And  so  far  as  this  debt  is  concerned,  and  as  part  of  the  consideration 
thereof,  I  do  hereby  waive  all  right  which  I  or  either  of  us  have  under  the 
Constitution  and  Laws  of  this  or  any  other  State  to  claim  or  hold  any  personal 
property  exempt  to  me  from  levy  and  sale  under  execution.  And  should 
it  become  necessary  to  employ  an  attorney  in  the  collection  of  this  debt 
I  promise  to  pay  all  reasonable  attorney's  fees  charged  therefore. 
Attest:  C.W.James.  his 

A.  T.  Jones.  John  X  Smith 

mark 


720  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

The  possibility  of  extortion  which  this  method  makes  possible 
is  evident. 

It  is  worth  while  also  to  reproduce  a  copy,  actual  with  the  ex- 
ception of  the  names,  of  one  of  the  blanket  mortgages  often  given. 

THE  STATE  OF  ALABAMA, 

LOVVNDES  COUNTY. 

On  or  before  the  first  day  of  October  next  I  promise  to  pay  Jones  and  Co., 
or  order,  the  sum  of  $77.00  at  their  office  in  Fort  Deposit,  Alabama.  And  I 
hereby  waive  all  right  of  exemption  secured  to  me  under  and  by  the  Laws  and 
Constitution  of  the  State  of  Alabama  as  to  the  collection  of  this  debt.  And  I 
agree  to  pay  all  the  costs  of  making,  recording,  probating  or  acknowledging 
this  instrument,  together  with  a  reasonable  attorney's  fee,  and  all  other 
expenses  incident  to  the  collection  of  this  debt,  whether  by  suit  or  otherwise. 
And  to  secure  the  payment  of  the  above  note,  as  well  as  all  other  indebtedness 
I  may  now  owe  the  said  Jones  and  Co.,  and  all  future  advances  I  may  purchase 
from  the  said  Jones  and  Co.  during  the  year  1900,  whether  due  and  payable 
during  the  year  1900  or  not,  and  for  the  further  consideration  of  one  Dollar  to 
me  in  hand  paid  by  Jones  and  Co.,  the  receipt  whereof  I  do  hereby  acknowl- 
edge, I  do  hereby  grant,  bargain,  sell  and  convey  unto  said  Jones  and  Co. 
the  entire  crops  of  corn,  cotton,  cotton  seed,  fodder,  potatoes,  sugar  cane  and 
its  products  and  all  other  crops  of  every  kind  and  description  which  may 
be  made  and  grown  during  the  year  1900  on  lands  owned,  leased,  rented  or 
farmed  on  shares  for  or  by  the  undersigned  in  Lowndes  County,  Alabama,  or 
elsewhere.  Also  any  crops  to  or  in  which  the  undersigned  has  or  may  have 
any  interest,  right,  claim  or  title  in  Lowndes  County  or  elsewhere  during  and 
for  each  succeeding  year  until  the  indebtedness  secured  by  this  instrument  is 
fully  paid.  Also  all  the  corn,  cotton,  cotton  seed,  fodder,  peas,  and  all  other 
farm  produce  now  in  the  possession  of  the  undersigned.  Also  all  the  live 
stock,  vehicles  and  farming  implements  now  owned  by  or  furnished  to  the 
undersigned  by  Jones  and  Co.  during  the  year  1900.  Also  one  red  horse 
"  Lee,"  one  red  neck  cow  "  Priest,"  and  her  calf,  one  red  bull  yearling.  Said 
property  is  situated  in  Lowndes  County,  Alabama.  If.  after  maturity,  any  part 
of  the  unpaid  indebtedness  remains  unpaid,  Jones  and  Co.,  or  their  agents  or 
assigns,  are  authorized  and  empowered  to  seize  and  sell  all  or  any  of  the  above 
described  property,  at  private  sale  or  public  auction,  as  they  may  elect,  for 
cash.  If  at  public  auction,  before  their  store  door  or  elsewhere,  in  Fort 
Deposit,  Alabama,  after  posting  for  five  days  written  notice  of  said  sale  on 
post  office  door  in  said  town,  and  to  apply  the  proceeds  of  said  sale  to  the 
payment,  first  of  all  costs  and  expenses  provided  for  in  the  above  note  and 
expense  of  seizing  and  selling  said  property ;  second,  to  payment  in  full  of 
debt  or  debts  secured  by  said  mortgage,  and  the  surplus,  if  any,  pay  to  the 
undersigned.  And  the  said  mortgagee  or  assigns  is  hereby  authorized  to  pur- 
chase at  his  own  sale  under  this  mortgage.  I  agree  that  no  member  of  my 


THE  ECONOMIC  CONDITION  OF  THE  NEGRO      721 

family,  nor  anyone  living  with  me,  nor  any  person  under  my  control,  shall 
have  an  extra  patch  on  the  above  described  lands,  unless  covered  by  this 
mortgage ;  and  I  also  agree  that  this  mortgage  shall  cover  all  such  patches.  It 
is  further  agreed  and  understood  that  any  securities  held  by  Jones  and  Co.  as 
owner  or  assignee  on  any  of  the  above  described  property  executed  by  me 
prior  to  executing  this  mortgage  shall  be  retained  by  them,  and  shall  remain 
in  full  force  and  effect  until  the  above  note  and  future  advances  are  paid  in 
full,  and  shall  be  additional  security  for  this  debt.  There  is  no  lien  or  encum- 
brance upon  any  property  conveyed  by  this  instrument  except  that  held  by 
Jones  and  Co.  and  the  above  specified  rents.  If,  before  the  demands  hereby 
secured  are  payable,  any  of  the  property  conveyed  herein  shall  be  in  danger  of 
(or  from)  waste,  destruction  or  removal,  said  demands  shall  be  then  payable 
and  all  the  terms,  rights  and  powers  of  this  instrument  operative  and  enforce- 
able, as  if  and  under  a  past  due  mortgage. 

Witness  my  hand  and  seal  this  loth  day  of  January,  1900. 

Attest :  B.  C.  Cook.  Sam  Small.  L.  S. 

R.  J.  Bennett. 

It  may  be  granted  that  experience  has  shown  all  this  verbiage 
to  be  necessary.  In  the  hands  of  an  honest  landlord  it  is  as 
meaningless  as  that  in  the  ordinary  contract  we  sign  in  renting 
a  house.  In  the  hands  of  dishonest  landlord  or  merchant  it 
practically  enables  him  to  make  a  serf  of  the  negro.  The  mort- 
gage is  supposed  to  be  filed  at  once,  but  it  is  sometimes  held  to 
see  if  there  is  any  other  security  which  might  be  included.  The 
rascally  creditor  watches  the  crop  and  if  the  negro  may  have  a 
surplus  he  easily  tempts  him  to  buy  more,  or  more  simply  still, 
he  charges  to  his  account  imaginary  purchases,  so  that  at  the  end 
of  the  year  the  negro  is  still  in  debt.  The  negro  has  no  redress. 
He  cannot  prove  that  he  has  not  purchased  the  goods  and  his 
word  will  not  stand  against  the  merchant's.  Practically  he  is  tied 
down  to  the  land,  for  no  one  else  will  advance  him  under  these 
conditions.  Sometimes  he  escapes  by  getting  another  merchant 
to  settle  his  account  and  by  becoming  the  tenant  of  the  new 
man.  When  it  is  remembered  that  land  is  abundant  and  good 
labor  rare,  the  temptation  to  hold  a  man  on  the  land  by  fair 
means  or  foul  is  apparent.  Moreover,  the  merchant  by  specious 
reasoning  often  justifies  his  own  conduct.  He  says  that  the 
negro  will  spend  his  money  at  the  first  opportunity  and  that  he 
might  just  as  well  have  it  as  some  other  merchant.  I  would  not 


722  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

be  understood  as  saying  that  this  action  is  anything  but  the  great 
exception,  -but  there  are  dishonest  men  everywhere  who  are  ready 
to  take  advantage  of  their  weaker  fellows  and  the  negro  suffers 
as  a  result,  just  as  the  ignorant  foreigner  does  in  the  cities  of 
the  North. 

The  interest  may  also  be  reckoned  into  the  face  of  the  mort- 
gage. In  any  case  it  begins  the  day  the  paper  is  signed,  although 
the  money  or  its  equivalent  is  only  received  at  intervals  and  a 
full  year's  interest  is  paid,  often  on  the  face  of  the  mortgage, 
even  if  only  two  thirds  of  it  has  actually  been  advanced  to  the 
negro,  no  matter  when  the  account  is  settled.  The  helplessness 
of  the  negro  who  finds  himself  in  the  hands  of  a  sharper  is 
obvious  when  that  sharper  has  practical  control  of  the  situation. 
In  many  and  curious  ways  the  landlord  seeks  to  hold  his  tenants. 
He  is  expected  to  stand  by  them  in  time  of  trouble,  to  protect 
them  against  the  aggressions  of  other  blacks  and  of  whites  as 
well.  This  paternalism  is  often  carried  to  surprising  lengths.1 

The  size  of  a  man's  family  is  known  and  the  riders  see  to  it 
that  he  keeps  all  the  working  hands  in  the  field.  If  the  riders 
have  any  trouble  with  a  negro  they  are  apt  to  take  it  out  in 
physical  punishment,  to  "wear  him  out,"  as  the  phrase  goes. 
Thus  resentment  is  seldom  harbored  against  a  negro  and  there 
are  many  who  claim  that  this  physical  discipline  is  far  better 
than  any  prison  regime  in  its  effects  upon  the  negro.  In  spite 

1  Some  change  for  the  better  has  probably  taken  place  since  the  above  was 
written,  as  the  following  extract  indicates. —  ED. 

Two  decades  ago  the  common  way  the  merchant  or  landlord  secured  himself  against 
losses  was  by  taking  a  lien  on  the  crops.  The  lien  entitled  the  landlord  to  hold  in  possession 
all  or  part  of  a  renter's  crop  until  all  claims  were  paid.  The  lien  was  not  only  upon  growing 
crops,  but  often  upon  unplanted  crops  as  well.  If  through  the  crop  lien  the  landlord's  claim 
was  not  settled  in  one  season,  it  was  continued  into  the  next.  The  old  crop  lien  system  with 
all  its  force  and  meaning  has  apparently  changed  in  meaning  and  form  in  some  indescribable 
ways,  and  since  the  renter  has  gradually  come  into  possession  of  personal  property,  money 
is  secured  for  farming  by  making  notes  and  mortgages  on  that  property.  All  these  may  have 
some  features  of  the  crop  lien  system,  but  do  not  have  the  name.  ...  It  is  as  much  the  de- 
sire, and  as  much  to  the  advantage,  of  the  landlord  to  get  rent  or  interest  on  the  money  in- 
volved in  land  with  least  trouble,  as  it  is  the  renter's  desire  to  advance  himself,  and  enjoy  the 
privilege  of  managing  his  affairs.  The  present  trend  of  renting  conditions  —  conditions  which 
relieve  the  landlord  of  responsibilities  and  which  put  upon  the  renter  more  responsibilities  — 
is  in  this  direction.  —  THOMAS  15.  EDWARDS  (Supervisor  of  Colored  Public  Schools,  Talla- 
poo<n  County,  Alabama),  "The  Tenant  System  and  Some  Changes  since  Emancipation," 
Annals  uf  the  American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social  Science,  September,  1913,  p.  45. 


THE  ECONOMIC  CONDITION  OF  THE  NEGRO      723 

of  all  that  is  done  it  is  claimed  that  the  negroes  are  getting  less 
reliable  and  that  the  chief  dependence  is  now  in  the  older  men, 
the  women  and  the  children.  One  remark,  made  by  a  planter's 
wife,  which  impressed  me  as  having  a  good  deal  of  significance, 
was,  "the  negroes  do  not  sing  as  much  now  as  formerly." 

To  get  at  anything  like  an  accurate  statement  of  the  income 
and  expenses  of  a  negro  family  is  a  difficult  matter.  The  follow- 
ing account  of  three  families  will  give  a  fair  idea  of  their  budget 
for  part  of  the  year  at  least. 

Family  No.  i  consists  of  five  adults  (over  14)  and  one  child. 
They  live  in  a  two-roomed  cabin  and  own  one  mule,  two  horses, 
two  cows.  Their  account  with  the  landlord  for  the  years  1900 
and  1901  was  : 

1900  1901 

To  balance  1899    ....  $32.60  To  balance  1900    ....  $15.21 

Cash  ($25.00)  for  mule    .     .  36.00  Cash 26.57 

Clothing 19.68  Clothing 9.55 

Feed 15.20  Feed  and  seed 44-iQ 

Provisions 23.00  Provisions 26.29 

Tools 2.03  Tools .55 

Interest  and  recording  fee    .  16.87  Interest  and  recording  fee    .  16.34 

$145.38  $138.70 

Their  credit  for  1901  was  $103.92,  thus  leaving  a  deficit  for  the 
beginning  of  the  next  year.  As  the  advances  stop  in  August  or 
September,  and  the  balance  of  the  purchases  are  for  cash  and 
maybe  at  other  stores,  there  is  no  way  of  getting  at  them.  In 
1900  the  family  paid  $201  toward  the  85  acres  they  are  pur- 
chasing, part  of  this  sum  probably  coming  from  the  crop  of 
1899,  and  in  1901  they  made  a  further  payment  of  $34.  This 
family  is  doing  much  better  than  the  average.  It  may  be  inter- 
esting to  see  a  copy  of  his  account  for  the  year  1901  taken  from 
the  ledger  of  the  planter. 

Jan.  i.       Balance  1900 $i5-21 

Jan.  12.      10  bu.  corn,  $5  :   fodder,  $1.20  :  cash,  $8 14.20 

Jan.  19.  Cash  for  tax,  $  i  .43  ;  recording  fee,  $i  ;  cash,  $13.25  .  .  15.68 
Feb.  2.  Plow  shoes,  $1.40:  gents'  hose,  10  cents;  20  yd.  check. 

$i  ;   2  straw  hats,  $1.20 4.90 


724  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Feb.  2.      23.5    bu.  corn,   $14.94;   cash,    79  cents;   shoes,   $1.50; 

plow  lines,  20  cents $17-43 

Mar.  15.  15  yd.  drilling,  $1.20;  15  yd.  check,  75  cents;  4.5  Ib. 

bacon,  48  cents 2.43 

Apr.  6.  10  bu.  corn,  $7 ;  5  bu.  cotton  seed,  $1.75  ;  4.5  Ib.  bacon, 

53  cents 9.28 

Apr.  12.  Bu.  meal,  65  cents;  spool  cotton,  5  cents;  tobacco,  10 

cents;  7  Ib.  bacon,  81  cents;  5  bu.  corn,  $3.50  ...  5.11 
May  i.  Cash,  $i  ;  30  Ib.  bacon,  $3.45  ;  work  shoes,  $i  .10  ;  gents' 

shoes,  $1.25;  half  bu.  meal,  35  cents 7.15 

May  I.  30  Ib.  bacon,  $3.45  ;  (25)  30  Ib.  bacon,  $3.30;  sack  meal, 

$1-35 8-10 

June  8.  2-3  bu.  oats,  35  cents;  1-3  bu.  corn,  25  cents;  bu.  meal, 

70  cents;  sack  feed,  $2.50 3.80 

June  14.  Sack  meal,  $1.35;  12  Ib.  bacon,  $1.32;  cash,  $i  ;  (22) 

12  Ib.  bacon,  $1.38 5.05 

June  22.  Sack  meal,  $  i  .35;  sack  feed,  $2.50;  plow  sweep,  35  cents;  4.20 
July  i .  6  Ib.  bacon,  69  cents ;  (5)  sack  feed,  $2.60  ;  half  bu.  meal, 

35  cents;  (9)  bu.  meal,  75  cents;  10  Ib.  bacon,  $1.15  .  5.54 
July  18.  8  Ib.  bacon,  92  cents;  (19)  sack  feed,  $2.60;  (25)  bu. 

meal,  90  cents 4.42 

Aug.  6.  Half  bu.  meal,  50  cents;  4  Ib.  bacon,  46  cents;  cash, 

35  cents 1.31 

Aug.  6.  Interest 15-34 

Oct.  6.  Cash,  75  cents .75 

$138.70 

The  second  family  consists  of  three  adults  and  three  children. 
They  have  three  one-roomed  cabins,  own  one  mule  and  two  cows, 

and  are  leasing  fifty  acres  of  land,  the  effort  to  buy  it  having 

proved  too  much.  Their  account  for  1900  and  1901  was  as 
follows  : 

1900  1901 

$  0.50       Balance  Jan.  i $  4.15 

9.00       Cash 2.82 

9.79       Clothing 7.55 

1 1.50       Feed 21.22 

13.48       Provisions 17-69 

.80       Tobacco .55 

.40       Tools,  etc .70 

5.77       Interest  and  fee     ....  7.90 

$52.24  $62.48 


Balance  Jan.  I  .      .      .      . 

Cash 

Clothing 

Feed 

Provisions 

Tobacco 

Tools,  etc 

Interest  and  recording  fee 


THE  ECONOMIC  CONDITION  OF  THE  NEGRO      725 

The  debit  for  1900  was  all  paid  by  November  first,  and  by 
November  first,  1901,  $58.40  of  the  charge  for  that  year  had 
been  paid.  In  1900  the  man  paid  $94.61  towards  his  land  but 
has  since  been  leasing. 

The  third  family  consists  of  two  adults  and  three  children. 
They  live  in  a  board  cabin  of  two  rooms,  have  one  mule,  one  cow 
and  one  horse.  They  are  purchasing  50  acres  of  land.  Their 
accounts  for  1900  and  1901  stand  between  the  two  already  given. 

1900  1901 

Balance  1899 $17.24      Balance  1900 $T3-93 

Cash 23.20       Cash 21.28 

Clothing 4.73       Clothing 6.30 

Provisions 19.80       Provisions 21.36 

Tools 4-4°      Tools 3.50 

Interest  and  fee     ....  8.40  Interest  and  fee     ....  12.40 

Feed 26.50 

$77.41  $109.28 

By  November  30,  1901,  they  had  paid  $79.13  of  their  account. 
In  1900  they  paid  $180  towards  their  land  and  $29.60  in  1901. 

All  of  these  families  are  a  little  above  the  average.  The 
income  is  supplemented  by  the  sale  of  chickens,  eggs,  and  occa- 
sionally butter.  In  hard  years  when  the  crops  are  poor  the  men 
and  older  boys  seek  service  in  the  mines  of  north  Alabama  or 
on  the  railroads  during  the  summer  before  cotton  picking  begins, 
and  again  during  the  winter. 

The  outfit  of  the  average  farmer  is  very  inexpensive  and  is 
somewhat  as  follows  : 

Harness.  $1.50;   pony  plow,  $3;  extra  point,  25  cents $4-75 

Sweepstock,1  75  cents;  3  sweeps,  90  cents;  scooter.-  10  cents  .  .  .  1.75 
2  hoes,  80  cents  ;  blacksmith  (yearly  average),  50  cents 1.30 

Total .      .      .     $7.80 

A  cow  costs  $25,  pigs  $2  to  $2.50,  wagon  (seldom  owned) 
$45.  A  mule  now  costs  from  $100  to  $150,  but  may  be  rented 

1  A  sweep  is  a  form  of  cultivator  used  in  cleaning  grass  and  weeds  from  the 
rows  of  cotton. 

2  A  scooter,  or  "  bull-tongue,"  is  a  strip  of  iron  used  in  opening  the  furrow  for 
the  cotton  seed. 


726 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


by  the  year  for  $20  or  $25.  Owners  claim  there  is  no  profit  in 
letting  them  at  this  price  and  the  negroes  assert  that  if  one 
dies  the  owner  often  claims  that  it  had  been  sold  and  proceeds 
to  collect  the  value  thereof.  From  either  point  of  view  the  plan 
seems  to  meet  with  but  little  favor. 

The  following  table  will  give  some  idea  of  the  condition  and 
personal  property  of  a  number  of  families  in  Lowndes  County : 


.'     Z 

[fl 

s  w 

ft, 

B    6J 

Z 

« 

o 

M 

ADULT: 

Z    £j 

U 

g 

u 

a 

K 

3| 

WING  J 
CHINES- 

MULES 

c 

in 

a 

0 

O 

£ 

i 

Q 

CJ  a 

O 
« 

* 

CO 

Family  I    .    . 

4 

I 

2 

0 

2 

O 

O 

0 

O 

2 

o 

2 

Family  2    .    . 

2 

I 

I 

0 

I 

O 

2 

o 

o 

2 

o 

Family  3    .    . 

3 

3 

3 

o 

3 

I 

I 

0 

o 

2 

o 

Family  4    .    . 

2 

3 

0 

I 

2 

0 

I 

I 

0 

I 

o 

Family  5    .    . 

4 

2 

j 

I 

2 

o 

o 

2 

o 

I 

2 

Family  6    .    . 

5 

I 

i 

o 

2 

0 

I 

2 

o 

2 

O 

O 

Family  7    .    . 

3 

O 

i 

I 

3 

o 

I 

0 

o 

2 

o 

Family  8    .    . 

3 

I 

i 

I 

2 

o 

I 

0 

o 

O 

o 

Family  9    .    . 

4 

O 

o 

3 

5 

o 

0 

I 

I 

O 

o 

Family  10  .    . 

5 

4 

I 

i 

3 

o 

I 

o 

0 

2 

o 

Total.    . 

35 

16 

1  1 

8 

'5 

I 

8 

6 

I 

14 

2 

IO 

69.    THE  ECONOMIC   FUTURE   OF  THE   NEGRO  AMERICAN.1 

What  are  the  questions  in  the  present  problem  of  the  economic 
status  of  the  negro  American  ?  They  may  be  summed  up  in 
four  groups  : 

1.  The  relation  of  the  negro  to  city  and  country. 

2.  The  relation  of  the  negro  to  group  and  national  economy. 

3.  The  influence  of  race  prejudice. 

4.  The  question  of  efficiency. 


1  From  The  Negro  American  Artisan.     Edited  by  \V.  E.  B.  DuBois  and  A.  G. 
Dill,  Atlanta  University  Publications  No.  17  (1912),  pp.  127-142. 


THE  ECONOMIC  CONDITION  OF  THE  NEGRO      727 

CITY  AND  COUNTRY 

A  fact  of  great  importance  in  regard  to  the  economic  condi- 
tions of  the  negro  American  is  his  cityward  movement.  Accord- 
ing to  the  Thirteenth  Census  2,689,229  or  27.3  per  cent  of  the 
negroes  in  the  United  States  lived  in  urban  centers  in  1910, 
a  decided  increase  over  1900.  The  cityward  movement  of  the 
negro  is  explained  by  : l 

1.  The  divorce  of  the  negro  from  the  soil. 

2.  The  trend  of  the  negro  to  industrial  and  commercial  centers. 

3.  Secondary  or  individual  causes  : 

(a)  Attractiveness  of  urban  centers. 

(b)  Labor  legislation. 

(c)  Desire  for  economic  improvement. 

(d)  Family  relationships. 

(e)  Desire  to  escape  from  restrictive  and  oppressive  legis- 

lation and  social  customs. 

This  means  an  intensifying  of  the  urban  economic  problem. 
This  group  of  2,689,229  town  negroes  presents  preeminently  all 
of  the  economic  problems  outside  of  those  connected  with  land- 
holding  and  agriculture. 

Moreover,  the  city  negroes  include  more  than  a  third  of  the 
intelligent  negroes  of  the  United  States  and  have  a  rate  of  illit- 
eracy of  probably  less  than  25  per  cent.  Unquestionably  it  is  in 
the  city  that  the  more  intricate  problems  of  economic  life  and 
race  contact  are  going  to  be  fought  out.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
very  presence  of  seven  million  negroes  in  the  country  districts 
makes  the  economic  problem  there,  though  simple  in  quality, 
of  tremendous  proportions  in  quantity  and  of  added  significance 
when  we  see  how  the  country  is  feeding  the  city  problems. 

1  See  G.  E.  Haynes,  The  Negro  at  Work  in  New  York  City,  pp.  13-44. 


728  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

GROUP  ECONOMY  AND  NATIONAL  ECONOMY 

Present  conditions  show  that  while  the  force  of  competition 
from  without  is  of  tremendous  economic  importance  in  the  eco- 
nomic development  of  the  negro  American  it  is  by  no  means 
final.  In  an  isolated  country  the  industry  of  the  inhabitants  can 
be  supported  and  developed  by  means  of  a  protecting  tariff  until 
the  country  is  able  to  enter  into  international  trade  with  fully 
developed  resources  ;  that  a  similar  thing  can  be  accomplished 
in  a  group  not  wholly  isolated  but  living  scattered  among  more 
numerous  and  richer  neighbors  is  often  forgotten.  There  is 
therefore  a  double  question  in  regard  to  the  negro's  economic 
advance.  The  first  question  is  :  How  far  is  the  negro  likely  to 
gain  a  foothold  as  one  of  the  economic  factors  in  the  nation's 
industrial  organization  ?  The  second  is  :  How  far  can  the  negro 
develop  a  group  economy  which  will  so  break  the  force  of  race 
prejudice  that  his  right  and  ability  to  enter  the  national  economy 
are  assured  ? 

RACE  PREJUDICE 

Race  prejudice,  more  than  any  other  single  factor,  retards 
the  negro's  development  in  the  economic  world.  Outside  of  all 
question  of  ability  an  American  of  negro  descent  will  find  more 
or  less  concerted  effort  on  the  part  of  his  white  neighbors  : 

1.  To  keep  him  from  all  positions  of  authority. 

2.  To  prevent  his  promotion  to  higher  grades. 

3.  To  exclude  him  entirely  from  certain  lines  of  industry. 

4.  To   prevent  him   from    competing  upon   equal   terms  with 

white  workingmen. 

5.  To  prevent  his  buying  land. 

6.  To  prevent  his  defense  of  his  economic  rights  and  status  by 

the  ballot. 

Efforts  in  these  directions  have  been  pressed  with  varying  degrees 
of  emphasis  and  have  had  varying  degrees  of  success.  Yet  they 
must  all  be  taken  into  account  in  any  economic  study  of  the 
negro  American.  Strikes  have  repeatedly  occurred  against  negro 


THE  ECONOMIC  CONDITION  OF  THE  NEGRO      729 

firemen,  of  whose  ability  there  was  no  complaint.  The  white 
office  boy,  errand  boy,  section  hand,  locomotive  fireman  all  have 
before  them  the  chance  to  become  clerk  or  manager  or  to  rise  in 
railway  service.  The  negro  has  few  such  openings.  Fully  half  i 
of  the  trade-unions  in  the  United  States,  counted  by  numerical 
strength,  exclude  negroes  from  membership  and  thus  usually 
prevent  them  from  working  at  the  trade.  Another  fourth  of  the 
unions,  while  admitting  a  few  black  men  here  and  there,  practi- 
cally exclude  most  of  them.  In  only  a  few  unions,  mostly  un- 
skilled, is  the  negro  welcomed,  as  in  the  case  of  the  miners.  In 
a  few  others  the  economic  foothold  of  the  negro  has  been  good 
enough  to  prevent  his  expulsion,  as  in  some  of  the  building 
trades.  Agitation  to  prevent  the  selling  of  land  to  negroes  has 
for  a  long  time  been  evident  over  large  districts  of  the  South 
and  is  still  spreading.  In  an  Atlanta  campaign  in  the  not  far 
distant  past  the  most  telling  cartoon  for  the  influence  of  white 
voters  was  one  which  represented  the  house  of  a  particular  can- 
didate in  process  of  erection  by  black  men.  The  black  vote  was 
of  course  disfranchised  in  this  contest,  as  it  is  in  a  large  part  of 
the  South. 

NEGRO  EFFICIENCY 

The  last  element  in  the  economic  condition  of  the  negro  is 
the  great  question  of  efficiency.  How  efficient  a  laborer  is  the 
negro  and  how  efficient  can  he  become  with  intelligent  technical 
training  and  encouragement  ?  That  the  average  negro  laborer 
to-day  is  less  efficient  than  the  average  European  laborer  is  cer- 
tain. When,  however,  you  take  into  account  the  negro's  past 
industrial  training,  his  present  ignorance,  and  the  social  atmos- 
phere in  which  he  works  it  is  not  exactly  fair  to  condemn  him 
nor  is  it  easy  to  say  offhand  what  is  his  possible  worth.  Certainly 
increasing  intelligence  has  made  him  increasingly  discontented 
with  his  conditions  of  work  ;  the  determined  withdrawing  of  re- 
sponsibility from  the  negro  has  not  increased  his  sense  of  respon- 
sibility ;  the  systematic  exploitation  of  black  labor  has  decreased 
its  steadiness  and  reliability.  Notwithstanding  all  this  there  never 
were  before  in  the  world's  history  so  many  black  men  steadily 


730  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

engaged  in  common  and  skilled  labor  as  in  the  case  of  the 
American  negro.  Nor  is  there  to-day  a  laboring  force  which 
seems  capable,  under  judicious  guidance,  of  more  remarkable 
development. 

ECONOMIC  GROUPS 

The  negroes  of  America  may  be  divided  into  three  distinct 
economic  groups  : 

1.  The    independents  —  farmers,    teachers,    clergymen,    mer- 
chants, and  professional  men  and  women. 

2.  The  struggling  —  artisans,  industrial  helpers,  servants,  and 
farm  tenants. 

3.  The  common  laborers. 

The  Independents 

The  independents  number  possibly  300,000  negroes  and  in- 
clude 225,000  farmers,  25,000  teachers,  17,000  clergymen, 
15,000  merchants,  and  numbers  of  professional  men  and  women 
of  various  sorts.  They  are  separated  sharply  into  a  rural  group 
of  farmers  and  an  urban  group  and  are  characterized  by  the  fact 
that  with  few  exceptions  they  live  by  an  economic  service  done 
their  own  people.  This  is  least  true  in  regard  to  the  farmers,  but 
even  in  their  case  it  is  approximately  true,  for  they,  to  an  increas- 
ingly large  degree,  raise  their  own  supplies  and  use  their  produce 
as  a  surplus  crop.  Usually  through  this  alone  do  they  come  into 
national  economy.  This  group  is  the  one  that  feels  the  force  of 
outward  competition  and  prejudice  least  in  its  economic  life  and 
most  in  its  spiritual  life.  It  is  the  head  and  front  of  the  group- 
economy  movement,  comprehends  the  spiritual  as  well  as  the 
economic  leaders  and  is  bound  in  the  future  to  have  a  large  and 
important  development,  limited  only  by  the  ability  of  the  race  to 
support  it.  However,  in  some  respects  this  group  is  truly  vulner- 
able. Many  of  the  teachers,  for  instance,  depend  upon  educa- 
tional boards  elected  by  white  voters  and  many  depend  upon 
philanthropy.  There  has  been  concerted  action  in  some  of  the 
rural  districts  of  the  South  to  drive  out  the  best  negro  teachers,, 
and  even  in  the  cities  the  way  of  the  independent  black  teacher 


THE  ECONOMIC  CONDITION  OF  THE  NEGRO      731 

who  dares  think  his  own  thoughts  is  made  difficult.  In  many 
cases  negro  teachers  under  the  great  philanthropic  foundations 
are  being  continually  warned  that  their  bread  and  butter  depend 
on  their  agreeing  with  present  public  opinion  in  regard  to  the 
negro.  There  is  growing  up,  however,  silently,  almost  unnoticed, 
a  distinct  negro  private-school  system  officered,  taught,  attended 
and  supported  by  negroes.  Such  private  schools  have  to-day  at 
least  30,000  pupils  and  are  growing  rapidly  —  another  example 
of  group  economy  as  produced  by  the  negro  American. 

If  we  regard  exclusively  the  urban  group  of  these  independ- 
ents we  find  that  the  best  class  of  this  group  is  fully  abreast  in 
education  and  morality  with  the  great  middle  class  of  Americans. 
They  have  furnished  notable  names  in  literature,  business  and 
professional  life  and  have  repeatedly  in  Boston,  New  York,  Phil- 
adelphia, Chicago,  Washington  and  other  great  urban  centers 
proved  their  right  to  be  treated  as  American  citizens  on  a  plane 
of  perfect  equality  with  other  citizens.  Despite  this  fact  and 
despite  the  fact,  too,  that  this  group  is  numerically  small  and 
without  much  inherited  wealth,  it  has  been  struggling  under  two 
overwhelming  burdens  :  First,  upon  this  group  has  been  laid  the 
duty  and  responsibility  of  the  care,  guidance  and  reformation  of 
the  great  stream  of  black  rural  immigrants  from  the  South  simply 
because  they  happen  to  be  of  the  same  race.  There  is  no  claim 
or  vestige  of  a  claim  that  this  small  city  group  of  risen  negroes 
is  responsible  for  the  degradation  of  the  plantation,  yet  upon  this 
small  group  the  great  work  is  placed.  In  the  case  of  other  immi- 
grants to  our  urban  centers,  each  race  must  care  for  its  own  and 
be  responsible  for  its  advancement,  but  the  helpers  are  given  all 
aid  and  sympathy  in  their  undertakings  and  their  hands  are  up- 
held. In  the  case  of  the  negro,  however,  every  disability,  every 
legal,  social  and  economic  bar  placed  before  the  new  immigrant 
must  be  endured  by  the  city  group  on  whom  the  immigrants 
have  been  dumped.  And  that  group  must  be  judged  continually 
by  the  worst  class  of  those  very  immigrants  whose  uplift  is  calmly 
shifted  by  the  city  at  large. 

What  is  the  result  ?  The  talented  tenth  is  submerged  under 
the  wave  of  immigration.  And  this  is  the  second  burden  under 


732  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

which  the  group  has  labored.  This  has  been  the  experience  in 
many  cities  of  the  North.  In  the  South,  however,  the  beating 
back  of  the  leading  group  has  not  awaited  the  excuse  of  immi- 
gration. On  the  general  ground  of  impudence  or  indolence  mem- 
bers of  this  class  of  economic  and  social  leaders  have  been 
repeatedly  driven  out  of  the  smaller  towns,  while  in  the  larger 
cities  every  possible  combination  and  tool,  from  the  Jim  Crow 
laws  to  the  secret  society  and  the  boycott,  have  been  made  time 
and  time  again  to  curtail  the  economic  advantages  of  the  mem- 
bers of  this  class  and  to  make  their  daily  life  so  intolerable  that 
they  would  either  leave  or  sink  to  listless  acquiescence. 

What  then,  in  view  of  these  conditions,  can  this  town  group 
do  in  self-defense  ?  It  can  organize  the  negroes  about  it  into 
a  self-supplying  group.  This  organization  is  actually  going  on. 
So  far  has  it  gone  that  in  cities  like  Washington,  Richmond  and 
Atlanta  a  negro  family  which  does  not  employ  a  negro  physician 
is  in  danger  of  social  ostracism  ;  in  the  North  this  is  extending  to 
grocery  stores  and  similar  businesses.  Whereas  only  a  few  years 
ago  negroes  transacted  insurance  business  with  white  companies, 
to-day  more  than  half  of  that  business  has  passed  to  black  companies. 

There  are  persons  who  see  nothing  but  the  advantages  of  this 
course.  But  it  has  grave  disadvantages,  too.  It  intensifies  preju- 
dice and  bitterness.  For  example  :  White  insurance  agents  and 
collectors  in  the  South,  for  fear  of  white  opinion,  would  not  take 
off  their  hats  when  they  entered  negro  homes.  The  black  com- 
panies have  harped  -on  this,  published  it,  called  attention  to  it 
and  actually  capitalized  it  into  cold  cash.  Again,  this  movement 
narrows  the  activity  of  the  best  class  of  negroes,  withdraws  them 
from  much  helpful  competition  and  contact,  perverts  and  cheapens 
their  ideals  —  in  fact  provincializes  them  in  thought  and  deed. 
Yet  it  is  to-day  the  only  path  of  economic  escape  for  the  most 
gifted  class  of  black  men,  and  the  development  along  this  line  is 
certain  to  be  enormous. 

Turning  to  the  rural  group  of  this  independent  class,  the 
negro  landowners  are  to  be  considered.  Here  first  one  runs 
against  one  of  those  traditional  statements  which  pass  for  truth 
because  unchallenged,  namely,  that  it  is  easy  for  the  Southern 


THE  ECONOMIC  CONDITION  OF  THE  NEGRO      733 

negro  to  buy  land.  The  letter  of  this  statement  is  true,  but  the 
spirit  of  it  is  false.  There  are  vast  tracts  of  land  in  the  South 
that  anybody,  black  or  white,  can  buy  for  little  or  nothing  for 
the  simple  reason  that  such  tracts  are  worth  little  or  nothing. 
Eventually  these  lands  will  become  valuable.  But  they  are  almost 
valueless  to-day.  For  the  negro,  land  to  be  of  any  value  must 
have  present  value,  for  he  is  too  poor  to  wait.  Moreover,  it  must  be 

1.  Land  which  he  knows  how  to  cultivate. 

2.  Land  accessible  to  a  market. 

3.  Land  so  situated  as  to  afford  the  owner  protection. 
There  are  certain  crops  which  the  negro  farmer  knows  how 

to  cultivate  ;  to  these  can  be  added  certain  food  supplies.  Gradu- 
ally intensive  cultivation  can  be  taught,  but  this  takes  a  long  time. 
It  is  idle  to  compare  the  South  with  Belgium  or  France,  for  the 
agricultural  economy  of  those  lands  is  the  result  of  centuries  of 
training  aided  by  a  rising  market  and  by  law  and  order,  while 
the  present  agricultural  economy  of  the  South  is  but  a  generation 
removed  from  the  land  murder  of  a  slave  regime.  No  graduate 
of  that  school  knows  how  to  make  the  desert  blossom  as  the 
rose,  and  the  process  of  teaching  must  be  long  and  tedious. 
Meantime  he  must  live  on  such  crops  as  he  knows  how  to  culti- 
vate. In  addition  to  the  poverty  of  the  soil,  bad  roads,  compara- 
tively few  railroads,  and  few  navigable  rivers  throw  much  of  this 
land  out  of  usefulness.  But  even  more  important  than  all  this  : 
the  negro  farmer  must  seek  the  protection  of  community  life 
with  his  own  people  and  this  he  finds  in  the  black  belt.  It  is 
precisely  in  this  black  belt,  however,  that  it  is  most  difficult  for 
him  to  buy  land.  For  there  it  is  that  the  capitalistic  culture  of 
cotton  with  a  system  of  labor  peonage  is  so  profitable  that  land 
is  high.  In  addition,  in  many  of  these  regions  it  is  considered 
bad  policy  to  sell  land  to  negroes  because  a  fever  of  landown- 
ing "  demoralizes  "  the  labor  system  ;  so  that  in  the  densest  black 
belt  of  the  South  the  percentage  of  landholding  among  negroes 
is  alarmingly  low,  a  fact  that  has  led  to  curious  moralizing  on  the 
shiftlessness  of  black  men. 

The  increase  of  the  average  size  of  farms  in  many  parts  of  the 
South  is  illustrative  of  the  astounding  and  dangerous  concentration 


734  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  landholding  in  that  section,  which  is  itself  more  appalling  when 
it  is  noted  that  many  of  these  farms  do  not  belong  singly  to  single 
owners  but  are  owned  in  groups  of  as  high  as  forty  or  fifty  by 
great  landed  proprietors.  Many  of  these  landed  proprietors  refuse 
to  sell  a  single  acre  of  land  to  black  men.  While  there  are  of 
course  large  regions  where  black  men  can  buy  land  on  reasonable 
terms,  it  is  usually  land  poorly  situated  as  regards  markets,  or 
unhealthful  in  climate,  or  so  placed  as  to  afford  the  owners  poor 
schools  and  lawless,  overbearing  white  neighbors. 

Add  to  these  facts  the  results  of  the  training  and  the  charac- 
ter of  the  negro  farmers.  Black  farmers  are  often  discussed  and 
criticized  as  though  they  were  responsible,  trained  men  who  care- 
lessly and  viciously  neglect  their  economic  opportunity.  On  the 
contrary  they  are  for  the  most  part  unlettered  men,  consciously 
and  carefully  trained  to  irresponsibility,  to  whom  all  concepts  of 
modern  property  and  saving  are  new  and  who  need  benevolent 
guardianship  in  their  upward  striving.  Such  guardianship  they 
have  in  some  cases  received  from  former  masters  and  in  this  way 
a  considerable  number  of  the  present  landowners  first  got  their 
land.  In  the  great  majority  of  cases,  however,  this  guardianship 
has  consisted  in  deliberately  taking  the  earnings  of  the  negro 
farmer  and  appropriating  them  to  the  use  of  the  landlord.  The 
argument  was  this:  "These  negroes  do  not  need  this  money. 
If  I  give  it  to  them  they  '11  squander  it  or  leave  the  plantation  ; 
therefore  I  will  give  them  just  enough  to  be  happy  and  keep 
them  with  me.  In  any  case  their  labor  rightfully  belongs  to  me 
and  my  fathers  and  was  illegally  taken  from  us."  On  the  strength 
of  this  argument  and  by  such  practices  it  is  a  conservative  esti- 
mate to  say  that  three  fourths  of  the  stipulated  wages  and  shares 
of  crops  which  the  negro  has  earned  on  the  farm  since  emanci- 
pation has  been  illegally  withheld  from  him  by  the  white  land- 
lords, either  on  the  plea  that  this  was  for  his  own  good  or 
j without  any  plea  at  all. 

Would  this  wealth  have  been  wasted  if  given  the  laborer  ? 
Waiving  the  mere  question  of  the  right  of  any  employer  to  with- 
hold wages,  take  the  purely  economic  question  :  Is  the  commu- 
nity richer  by  such  practices  ?  It  is  not.  The  South  is  poorer. 


THE  ECONOMIC  CONDITION  OF  THE  NEGRO      735 

The  best  negroes  would  have  squandered  much  at  first  and  most 
would  have  squandered  all,  but  this  would  have  been  more  than 
offset  by  the  increased  responsibility  and  efficiency  of  the  result- 
ing negro  landholders.  Nor  is  this  mere  pious  opinion.  There 
is  in  the  South,  in  the  middle  of  the  black  belt,  a  county  of  some 
700  square  miles,  Lowndes  County,  Alabama.  It  contained  in 
1910  28,125  negroes  and  3769  whites.  It  was  formerly  the 
seat  of  the  most  strenuous  type  of  American  slavery  —  with 
absentee  owners,  living  at  ease  in  Montgomery,  great  stretches 
of  plantations  with  500  to  1000  slaves  on  each  driven  by  over- 
seers and  riders.  There  was  no  communication  with  the  outside 
world,  little  passing  between  plantations.  The  negroes  were 
slothful  and  ignorant  —  even  to-day,  fifty  years  after  emancipation, 
the  illiteracy  among  those  over  ten  is  about  51  per  cent.  It 
would  be  difficult  to  find  a  place  where  conditions  were  on  the 
whole  more  unfavorable  to  the  rise  of  the  negro.  The  white 
element  was  lawless,  the  negroes  thoroughly  cowed,  and  up  until 
recent  times  the  body  of  a  dead  negro  did  not  even  call  for  an 
arrest.  In  this  county  during  the  last  twenty  years  there  has 
been  carried  on  a  scheme  of  cooperative  land-buying  under  the 
Calhoun  School.  It  was  asked  for  by  a  few  negroes  who  could 
not  get  land ;  it  was  engineered  by  a  negro  graduate  of  Hamp- 
ton ;  it  was  made  possible  by  the  willingness  of  a  white  landlord 
to  sell  his  plantation  and  actively  further  the  enterprise  by  advice 
and  good  will.  It  was  capitalized  by  white  Northerners  and  in- 
spired by  a  New  England  woman.  Here  was  every  element  in 
partnership,  and  the  experiment  began  in  1892.  It  encountered 
all  sorts  of  difficulties  :  the  character  and  training  of  the  men 
involved ;  the  enmity  of  the  surrounding  white  population,  with  a 
few  notable  exceptions  ;  the  natural  suspicion  of  the  black  popu- 
lation, born  of  a  regime  of  cheating ;  the  low  price  of  cotton  ;  sev- 
eral years  of  alternate  flood  and  drought ;  and  the  attempts  of  the 
neighboring  whites  to  secure  the  homesteads  through  mortgages. 
The  twentieth  annual  report  of  the  Principal  of  the  Calhoun 
Colored  School  of  Calhoun,  Lowndes  County,  Alabama,  says  : 

While  in  1892  the  majority  of  the  people  lived  in  rented  one-room  cabins, 
now  by  far  the  larger  number  are  in  cottages  of  from  two  to  four  rooms  and  in 


736  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

some  cases  as  many  as  six  to  eight  rooms.  Many  of  these  cottages  were  put  up  and 
are  owned  by  the  negro  occupants  on  land  they  have  bought  through  the  school. 
The  improvements  have  come  slowly  and  by  daily,  almost  imperceptible, 
growth,  but  just  as  truly  have  they  come  to  stay  and  to  increase.  .  .  .  All  the 
land  the  school  had  for  sale  near  its  own  locality  has  been  bought  by  the 
negroes.  Several  men  have  this  year  finished  their  payments  on  land  and  on 
houses,  and  have  paid  in  full  the  mortgages  they  were  under.  Only  a  few  men 
have  still  a  debt  remaining  before  they  can  really  say,  "  These  are  our  own 
homes."  In  several  instances  a  man  has  sold  a  few  acres  of  his  land  to  lessen 
the  debt  upon  the  whole,  and  this  is  a  double  help.  It  reduces  his  financial 
burden  and  forces  him  into  more  intensive  farming. 

Not  only  from  an  economic  point  of  view,  but  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  sociologist  as  well,  the  experiment  here  in  Lowndes 
County  has  been  both  interesting  and  successful.  The  negroes 
call  it  the  "  Free  Land."  There  are  no  overseers  and  riders 
roaming  about  whipping  the  workers  and  seducing  black  wives 
and  daughters  ;  there  is  an  eight  months'  school  in  their  midst, 
a  pretty  new  church,  monthly  conferences,  a  peculiar  system  of 
self-government,  and  a  family  life  of  high  moral  tone. 

What  has  been  done  in  Lowndes  County  under  the  Calhoun 
School  and  the  sensible  guardianship  of  its  wise  leaders  could 
be  duplicated  in  every  single  black-belt  county  in  the  South.  It 
is  to  be  hoped  that  such  will  be  done,  and  on  that  hope  is  based 
one's  faith  in  the  economic  future  of  this  black  rural  group. 

The  Struggling 

The  second  great  economic  group  among  the  negroes  of 
America  may  be  called  "the  struggling."  It  includes  the  arti- 
sans, the  industrial  helpers,  the  servants,  and  the  farm  tenants. 
This  group  is  characterized  as  follows  : 

1.  It  is  sharply  divided  into  a  city  and  a  country  group. 

2.  W'hile   it  has  a   large    significance    in   the   group  economy 
of  the  negro  American,  its  overwhelming  significance  is  for  the 
industry  of  the  nation  as  a  whole. 

3.  Its  great  hindrance  is  the  necessity  of  group  substitution  in 
the  place  of  individual  promotion. 

4.  Its  greatest  enemy  is  the  organized  opposition  of  its  white 
fellow  workmen. 


THE  ECONOMIC  CONDITION  OF  THE  NEGRO      73? 

The  rural  group  of  this  class  of  negro  Americans  consists  of 
farm  tenants.  In  a  large  number  of  cases  farm  tenancy  has  been 
an  aid  to  land-buying ;  in  many  cases  farm  tenancy  has  been  a 
school  of  thrift  and  saving ;  in  the  majority  of  cases  it  was  the 
only  available  system  after  the  war  when  the  negroes  were  set 
free  without  landed  possessions  of  their  own.  Yet,  when  all  this 
is  said,  it  remains  true  that  the  system  of  farm  tenancy  as  prac- 
ticed over  the  larger  part  of  the  South  to-day  is  a  direct  encour- 
agement to  cheating  and  peonage,  a  means  of  debauching  labor, 
and  a  feeder  of  crime  and  vagrancy.  It  demands  for  its  support 
a  system  of  mortgage  and  contract  laws  and  a  method  of  admin- 
istration which  are  a  disgrace  to  twentieth-century  civilization. 
For  every  man  whom  the  system  has  helped  into  independence 
it  has  pushed  ten  back  into  virtual  slavery.  It  is  often  claimed 
that  honest  and  benevolent  employers  and  landholders  have  made 
this  system  a  means  of  uplift,  development,  and  growth.  In 
thousands  of  cases  this  is  perfectly  true  ;  but  at  the  same  time  it 
remains  true  and  terribly  true  that  any  system  of  free  labor  where 
the  returns  of  the  laborer,  the  settlement  of  all  disputes,  the 
drawing  of  the  contract,  the  determination  of  the  rent,  the 
expenditure  of  the  employees  or  tenants,  the  price  they  pay  for 
living,  the  character  of  the  houses  they  live  in,  and  their  move- 
ments during  and  after  their  work  are  left  practically  to  the  un- 
questionable power  of  one  man  who  owns  the  land  and  profits  by 
the  labor  and  who  is  in  the  exercise  of  his  power  practically  unre- 
strained by  public  opinion  or  the  courts  and  who  has  no  fear  of 
ballots  in  the  hands  of  the  laborers  or  their  friends  —  any  such 
system  is  inherently  wrong.  If  men  complain  of  its  results  being 
shiftlessness,  listlessness,  and  crime,  they  have  themselves  to 
thank.  To  the  man  who  declares  that  he  is  acting  justly  and 
treating  his  tenants  and  employees  even  better  than  they  treat 
themselves,  it  is  sufficient  answer  to  say  that  he  is  an  exception 
to  the  rule ;  that  the  majority  of  the  landholders  are  as  indifferent 
to  the  welfare  of  their  men  as  are  employers  the  world  over  ;  and 
that  a  deplorably  large  minority  consciously  oppress  and  cheat 
them.  The  best  employer  or  landholder  suffers,  therefore,  for  the 
sins  of  the  average. 


738  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

The  only  salvation  for  these  negro  tenants  lies  in  landhold- 
ing,  and  in  this  the  negroes  have  made  commendable  strides. 
In  1890  negro  Americans  owned  120,738  farms;  in  1900  they 
owned  187,799  farms  ;  in  1910  they  owned  about  220,000  farms, 
an  increase  of  over  82  per  cent.  If  the  negroes  throughout  the 
whole  of  the  rural  South  had  been  encouraged  by  such  wise  eco- 
nomic leadership  as  was  the  case  in  Lowndes  County,  Alabama, 
referred  to  above,  the  record  would  be  even  more  encouraging. 

The  city  group  of  this  class  of  negro  workers  consists  of  per- 
haps 130,000  skilled  artisans,  600,000  semiskilled  and  ordinary 
industrial  helpers,  and  500,000  servants.  The  servant  class  has 
lost  most  of  its  best  representatives  because  it  offers  a  narrower 
and  narrower  method  of  uplift.  This  is  due  in  part  to  foreign 
competition  and  in  part  to  the  fact  that  the  temptations  to  negro 
girls  in  domestic  service  are  greater  than  in  any  single  industry. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  the  mulatto  is  the  product  of  house 
service  in  the  South. 

With  the  skilled  and  semiskilled  negroes  the  industrial  his- 
tory has  been  this :  Groups  of  negroes  have  been  excluded 
entirely  from  certain  trades  and  admitted  to  others.  Unfor- 
tunately they  have  been  able  to  hold  their  place  in  the  second 
set  by  working  for  lower  wages,  though  in  certain  industries  they 
have  forced  themselves  without  resorting  to  the  lever  of  low 
wages.  This  gave  the  trade-unions  a  chance  to  fight  negroes 
as  scabs.  In  some  battles  the  unions  won  and  so  continued 
to  exclude  negroes.  In  other  cases  the  negroes  won  and  were 
admitted  to  the  unions.  Even  in  the  union,  however,  they  have 
been  and  are  to-day  discriminated  against  in  many  cases.  In  the 
near  future  the  members  of  this  class  of  negro  workingmen  are 
going  to  have  the  struggle  of  their  lives,  and  the  outlook  indi- 
cates that  by  the  fulcrum  of  low  wages  and  the  group  economy, 
coupled  with  increasing  efficiency,  they  will  win.  This  means 
that  the  negro  is  to  be  admitted  to  the  national  economy  only 
by  degrading  labor  conditions.  The  alternative  offered  is  shame- 
ful and  could  be  easily  avoided  if  color  prejudice  did  not  insist 
upon  group  substitution  for  negroes  in  industry.  That  is,  under 
present  conditions  a  single  individual  or  a  few  men  of  negro 


THE  ECONOMIC  CONDITION  OF  THE  NEGRO      739 

descent  cannot  usually  gain  admittance  to  an  industry.  Only 
when  they  can  produce  workmen  enough  to  supply  the  whole 
industry  or  the  particular  enterprise  can  the  black  man  be  ad- 
mitted. Then  immediately  this  substitution  is  made  the  occasion 
of  a  change  in  labor  conditions  —  lower  wages,  longer  hours  and 
worse  treatment.  It  thus  often  happens  that  by  refusing  to  work 
beside  a  single  black  man,  the  workmen  in  an  industry  suffer  a 
general  lowering  of  wages  and  working  conditions.  The  real  eco- 
nomic question  in  the  South  is  :  How  long  will  race  prejudice 
supply  a  more  powerful  motive  to  white  workingmen  of  the  South 
than  decent  wages  and  industrial  conditions  ?  To-day  the  power- 
ful threat  of  negro  labor  is  making  child  labor  and  the  fourteen- 
hour  day  possible  in  Southern  factories.  How  long  will  it  be 
before  the  white  workingmen  of  the  South  discover  that  the  in- 
terests that  bind  them  to  their  black  brothers  are  greater  than 
those  that  artificially  separate  them  ?  The  answer  is  easy  :  That 
discovery  will  not  be  made  until  the  present  wave  of  extraor- 
dinary prosperity  and  exploitation  passes  and  the  ordinary  every- 
day level  of  economic  struggle  begins.  If  the  negro  can  hold 
his  own  until  then  his  development  is  certain. 


The  third  distinct  economic  group  of  American  negroes  is 
the  group  of  common  laborers  numbering  more  than  two  mil- 
lions. A  million  and  a  quarter  are  farm  laborers,  and  the  remain- 
der are  common  laborers  of  other  sorts.  This  group  includes 
half  the  breadwinners  of  the  race,  and  its  condition  is  precarious. 
In  many  of  the  country  districts  of  the  South  the  laws  concern- 
ing contracts,  wages  and  vagrancy  are  continually  forcing  the 
lower  half  of  these  laborers  into  pauperism  and  crime.  In  most 
of  the  Southern  States  the  law  concerning  the  breaking  of  a  con- 
tract to  work  made  between  an  ignorant  farm  hand  and  a  land- 
owner and  covering  a  year's  time  is  enforced  to  the  letter,  and 
the  breaking  of  such  a  contract  by  the  laborer  is  a  penitentiary 
offense.  A  large  proportion  of  the  homicides  in  the  country 
districts  of  the  South  in  which  negroes  are  the  slayers  or  the 


740  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

victims  arise  from  disputes  over  wage  settlement.  So  intolerable 
has  the  condition  of  the  farm  laborer  of  the  South  become,  that 
he  is  running  away  from  the  country  and  entering  the  cities, 
there  to  add  to  the  already  complex  problems  of  city  life.  One 
frequently  hears  the  demand  for  immigrants  to  fill  the  places  of 
these  fleeing  negro  farm  hands.  Notwithstanding  all  efforts  in  this 
direction  it  is  safe  to  say  that  no  group  of  immigrants  will  stand 
the  present  contract  and  crop-lien  system.  Certain  it  is  that  they 
will  not  stand  the  lawlessness  of  the  average  country  district  of 
the  South  where  every  white  man  is  a  law  unto  himself  and  where 
no  negro  has  any  rights  which  the  worst  white  man  is  bound  to 
respect.  So  bad  has  this  lawlessness  become  in  some  parts  of  the 
South  that  concerted  and  commendable  action  has  been  taken  against 
white  cappers  and  night  riders,  and  a  few  peonage  cases  have 
reached  the  courts.  These  efforts,  however,  have  but  scratched  the 
surface  of  the  real  trouble  —  a  trouble  which  lies  deep-seated  in 
the  social  fabric  of  the  South,  a  trouble  which  so  seriously  retards 
the  whole  South  in  its  economic  advancement  and  development. 

On  the  whole  there  are  four  general  cures  for  the  economic 
submersion  of  this  class  of  negro  Americans.  First,  the  classes 
above  must  be  given  every  facility  to  rise  so  as  not  to  bear  down 
upon  them  from  above.  Secondly,  the  system  of  law  and  law 
courts  in  the  South  by  which  it  is  practically  impossible  in  the 
country  districts  and  improbable  even  in  the  cities  for  a  black 
laborer  to  force  justice  from  a  white  employer  must  be  changed. 
Thirdly,  negro  children  must  be  given  common-school  training. 
The  states  are  not  doing  their  duty  in  this  respect,  and  the 
tendency  in  some  of  them  is  to  do  less.1 

Finally,  the  black  laborer  must  have  a  vote.  It  is  impossible 
for  these  two  million  and  more  black  workingmen  to  maintain 
themselves  when  thrust  into  modern  competitive  industry  so  long 
as  the  state  allows  them  no  voice  or  influence  in  the  making  of 
the  laws  or  the  interpretation  and  administration  of  the  same. 

The  value  of  land  and  buildings  owned  by  negroes  in  the  South 
in  1910  was  $272,992,238,  an  increase  of  nearly  90  per  cent  in 

1  See  Atlanta  University  Publications,  No.  16,  The  Common  School  and  the 
Negro  American. 


THE  ECONOMIC  CONDITION  OF  THE  NEGRO      741 

a  single  decade.  This  does  not  include  land  owned  by  negro 
farmers  and  rented  out.  On  a  basis  of  the  value  of  farm  property 
the  total  negro  wealth  to-day  may  be  estimated  at  $570,000,000. 
Yet  in  much  of  the  South  the  holders  of  this  wealth  are  as 
absolutely  disfranchised  as  the  worst  criminal  in  the  penitentiary. 
They  cannot  say  a  word  as  to  the  condition  of  the  roads  and 
highways  which  pass  their  property,  or  as  to  the  location  or  super- 
vision of  their  schools  or  the  choice  of  teachers,  or  as  to  the  selec- 
tion of  the  government  officials  or  the  fixing  of  the  rate  of  taxation. 

SUMMARY 

Half  the  negro  breadwinners  of  the  nation  are  partially  sub- 
merged by  a  bad  economic  system,  an  unjust  administration  of 
the  laws,  and  enforced  ignorance.  Their  future  depends  on 
common  schools,  justice,  and  the  right  to  vote.  A  million  and 
three  quarters  of  men  just  above  these  are  fighting  a  fierce  battle 
for  admission  to  the  industrial  ranks  of  the  nation  —  for  the  right 
to  work.  They  are  handicapped  by  their  own  industrial  history, 
which  has  made  them  often  shiftless  and  untrustworthy ;  but  they 
can,  by  means  of  wise  economic  leadership,  be  made  a  strong 
body  of  artisans  and  landowners.  Three  hundred  thousand  men 
stand  economically  at  the  head  of  the  negroes,  and  by  a  peculiar 
self-protecting  group  economy  are  making  themselves  independent 
of  prejudice  and  competition. 

What  can  be  said  of  any  one  of  these  groups  of  black  work- 
ingmen  can  be  said  of  them  all.  In  so  far  as  they  are  given 
opportunity  and  assured  justice,  in  so  far  can  the  -world  expect 
from  them  the  maximum  of  efficiency  and  service. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

RACE  SEGREGATION  AND  DISCRIMINATION 

Race   segregation   in  cities,   742. —  Pressure   of  race   prejudice   in  a   Northern 
city,  752.  —  Problems  of  citizenship:   the  views  of  a  Northern  student  of  the 

race  problem,  755. 

70.    RACE  SEGREGATION  IN  CITIES1 

Migration  to  the  city  is  being  followed  by  segregation  into  dis- 
tricts and  neighborhoods  within  the  city.  In  Northern  cities  years 
ago  negro  residents,  for  the  most  part,  lived  where  their  purses 
allowed.  With  the  influx  of  thousands  of  immigrants  from  the 
South  and  the  West  Indies,  both  native  negro  and  newcomer  have 
been  lumped  together  into  distinct  neighborhoods.  In  Southern 
cities  domestic  servants  usually  still  live  upon  the  premises  of  their 
employers  or  near  by.  But  the  growing  negro  business  and  pro- 
fessional classes  and  those  engaged  in  other  than  domestic  and 
personal  service  find  separate  sections  in  which  to  dwell.  Thus 
the  negro  ghetto  is  growing  up.  New  York  has  its  "  San  Juan 
Hill  "  in  the  West  Sixties,  and  its  Harlem  district  of  over  35,000 
within  about  eighteen  city  blocks ;  Philadelphia  has  its  Seventh 
Ward  ;  Chicago  has  its  State  Street ;  Washington  its  North  West 
neighborhood,  and  Baltimore  its  Druid  Hill  Avenue.  Louisville 
has  its  Chester  Street  and  its  "  Smoketown  "  ;  Atlanta  its  West 
End  and  Auburn  Avenue.  These  are  examples  taken  at  random 
which  are  typical  of  cities,  large  and  small,  North  and  South. 

This  segregation  within  the  city  is  caused  by  strong  forces  at 
work  both  within  and  without  the  body  of  the  negroes  themselves. 
Naturally,  negroes  desire  to  be  together.  The  consciousness  of 
kind  in  racial,  family,  and  friendly  ties  binds  them  closer  to  one 

1  By  G.  E.  Haynes.  Adapted  from  "  Conditions  among  Negroes  in  the  Cities," 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social  Science,  Vol.  XLIX, 
September,  1913,  pp.  109-119. 

742 


RACE  SEGREGATION  AND  DISCRIMINATION       743 

another  than  to  their  white  fellow-citizens.  But  as  negroes  develop 
in  intelligence,  in  their  standard  of  living  and  economic  power, 
they  desire  better  houses,  better  public  facilities,  and  other  con- 
veniences not  usually  obtainable  in  the  sections  allotted  to  their 
less  fortunate  black  brothers.  To  obtain  these  advantages  they 
seek  other  neighborhoods,  just  as  the  European  immigrants  who 
are  crowded  into  segregated  sections  of  our  cities  seek  better 
surroundings  when  they  are  economically  able  to  secure  them. 

But  a  prejudiced  opposition  from  his  prospective  white  neigh- 
bors confronts  the  negro,  which  does  not  meet  the  immigrant  who 
has  shuffled  off  the  coil  of  his  Continental  condition.  Intelligence 
and  culture  do  not  often  discount  color  of  skin.  Professions  of 
democratic  justice  in  the  North,  and  deeds  of  individual  kindness 
in  the  South,  have  not  yet  secured  to  negroes  the  unmolested 
residence  in  blocks  with  white  fellow-citizens.  In  Northern  cities 
where  larger  liberty  in  some  avenues  obtains,  the  home  life,  the 
church  life,  and  much  of  the  business  and  community  life  of 
negroes  are  carried  on  separately  and  apart  from  the  common 
life  of  the  whole  people.  In  Southern  communities,  with  sepa- 
rate street-car  laws,  separate  places  of  amusement  and  recreation, 
separate  hospitals  and  separate  cemeteries,  there  is  sharp  cleavage 
between  whites  and  negroes,  living  and  dead.  With  separation 
in  neighborhoods,  in  work,  in  churches,  in  homes,  and  in  almost 
every  phase  of  their  life,  there  is  growing  up  in  the  cities  of 
America  a  distinct  negro  world,  isolated  from  many  of  the  im- 
pulses of  the  'common  life  and  little  known  and  understood  by 
the  white  world  about  it. 

In  the  midst  of  this  migration  and  segregation  the  negro  is 
trying  to  make  a  threefold  adjustment,  each  phase  of  which  re- 
quires heroic  struggle.  First,  there  is  the  adjustment  that  all  rural 
populations  have  to  make  in  learning  to  live  in  town.  Adjustment 
to  conditions  of  housing,  employment,  amusement,  etc.,  is  neces- 
sary for  all  who  make  the  change  from  country  to  city.  The  negro 
must  make  a  second  adjustment  from  the  status  of  a  chattel  to 
that  of  free  contract,  from  servitude  to  citizenship.  He  has  to 
realize  in  his  own  consciousness  the  self-confidence  of  a  free  man. 
Finally,  the  negro  must  adjust  himself  to  the  white  population 


744  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

in  the  cities,  and  it  is  no  exaggeration  of  the  facts  to  say  that 
generally  to-day  the  attitude  of  this  white  population  is  either 
indifferent  or  prejudiced  or  both. 

Now,  the  outcome  of  segregation  in  such  a  serious  situation  is 
first  of  all  to  create  an  attitude  of  suspicion  and  hostility  between 
the  best  elements  of  the  two  races.  Too  much  of  the  negro's 
knowledge  of  the  white  world  comes  through  demagogues,  com- 
mercial sharks,  yellow  journalism,  and  those  "  citizens  "  who  com- 
pose the  mobs,  while  too  much  of  the  white  man's  knowledge  of 
the  negro  people  is  derived  from  similar  sources,  from  domestic 
servants,  and  from  superficial  observation  of  the  loafers  about  the 
streets.  The  best  elements  of  both  races,  thus  entirely  removed 
from  friendly  contact,  except  for  the  chance  meeting  of  individuals 
in  the  market  place,  know  hardly  anything  of  their  common  life 
and  tend  to  become  more  suspicious  and  hostile  toward  each 
other  than  toward  strangers  from  a  far  country. 

The  white  community  is  thus  frequently  led  to  unjust  judg- 
ments of  negroes  and  negro  neighborhoods,  as  seen  in  the 
soubriquets  of  "little  Africa,"  "black  bottom,"  "  Niggertown," 
"  Smoketown,"  "  Buzzard's  Alley,"  "  Chinch-row,"  and  as  indi- 
cated by  the  fact  that  the  individuals  and  families  who  live  in 
these  neighborhoods  are  all  lumped  by  popular  opinion  into  one 
class.  Only  here  and  there  does  a  white  person  come  to  know 
that  "  there  are  negroes  and  negroes  just  as  there  are  white  folks 
and  white  folks."  The  most  serious  side  of  this  attitude  and 
opinion  is,  that  the  negro  is  handicapped  by  them  in  securing  the 
very  things  that  would  help  him  in  working  out  his  own  salvation. 

In  the  matter  of  the  housing  conditions  under  which  he  must 
live,  reliable  investigations  have  shown  that  in  several  cities  the 
"  red-light "  districts  of  white  people  are  either  in  the  midst  of 
or  border  closely  upon  negro  neighborhoods.  Also  respectable 
negroes  often  find  it  impossible  to  free  themselves  from  disrepu- 
table and  vicious  neighbors  of  their  own  race,  because  the  locali- 
ties in  which  both  may  live  are  limited.  And  on  top  of  this, 
negroes  often  pay  higher  rentals  for  accommodations  similar  to 
those  of  white  tenants,  and,  frequently,  improved  houses  are 
secured  only  when  white  people  who  occupied  them  have  moved 


RACE  SEGREGATION  AND  DISCRIMINATION       745 

on  to  something  better.  In  Southern  cities  many  of  the  abler 
classes  of  negroes  have  escaped  the  environment  of  the  vicious 
element  by  creating  decent  neighborhoods  through  home  owner- 
ship, and  by  eternal  vigilance  excluding  saloons,  gambling  places 
or  other  degrading  agencies.  For  the  poorer  and  less  thrifty  ele- 
ment, in  a  number  of  towns  and  cities,  loose  building  regulations 
allow  greedy  landlords  to  profit  by  "  gun-barrel  "  shanties  and 
cottages,  by  "arks,"  of  which  the  typical  pigeon-house  would  be 
a  construction  model,  and  by  small  houses  crowded  upon  the  same 
lot,  often  facing  front  street,  side  street,  and  the  alley,  with  lack 
of  sewerage  and  with  other  sanitary  neglect,  which  an  inspector 
of  one  Southern  city  described  as  "a  crying  disgrace  to  any 
civilized  people." 

Yet,  in  the  face  of  these  handicaps,  thousands  of  homes  that 
would  do  credit  to  any  people  on  earth  are  springing  up  in  these 
cities.  In  the  absence  or  with  the  indifference  of  sanitary  authori- 
ties, intelligent  negroes  are  not  only  struggling  to  free  themselves 
from  disease-breeding  surroundings,  but  they  are  teaching  the  un- 
intelligent throng.  In  spite  of  spontaneous  schemes  of  real-estate 
owners  and  agents  to  keep  them  out  of  desirable  neighborhoods, 
in  spite  of  the  deliberate  designs  of  city  segregation  ordinances 
such  as  have  been  passed  in  several  cities  and  attempted  in  others, 
in  spite  of  intimidation,  the  abler  negroes  in  some  cities  are  buying 
homes  and  creating  decent  neighborhoods  in  which  to  live.  How- 
ever, the  larger  proportion  are  rent  payers  and  not  owners,  hence 
they  need  intelligent  leadership  and  influential  support  in  their 
efforts  for  improved  housing  and  neighborhood  conditions. 

Three  facts  should  be  placed  in  the  foreground  in  looking  at 
the  economic  conditions  of  the  segregated  negro  in  the  city.  First, 
the  masses  of  those  who  have  migrated  to  town  are  unprepared 
to  meet  the  exacting  requirements  of  organized  industry  and  the 
keen  competition  of  more  efficient  laborers.  Second,  organized 
facilities  for  training  these  inefficient,  groping  seekers  for  some- 
thing better  are  next  to  nothing  in  practically  all  the  cities  to 
which  they  are  flocking.  They  therefore  drift  hit  or  miss  into 
any  occupations  which  are  held  out  to  their  unskilled  hands  and 
untutored  brains.  Natural  aptitude  enables  many  to  "pick  up" 


746  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

some  skill,  and  these  succeed  in  gaining  a  stable  place.  But  the 
thousands  work  from  day  to  day  with  that  weak  tenure  and  fre- 
quent change  of  place  from  which  all  unskilled,  unorganized 
laborers  suffer  under  modern  industry  and  trade. 

The  third  fact  of  prime  importance  is  the  prejudice  of  the  white 
industrial  world,  which  the  negro  must  enter  to  earn  his  food, 
shelter,  and  raiment.  This  prejudice,  when  displayed  by  employers, 
is  partly  due  to  the  inefficiency  indicated  above  and  the  failure  to 
discriminate  between  the  efficient  individual  and  this  untrained 
throng.  When  exhibited  by  fellow  wage-earners,  it  is  partly  due 
to  fear  of  probable  successful  competitors  and  to  the  belief  that 
the  negro  has  "  his  place  "  fixed  by  a  previous  condition  of  servi- 
tude. But  in  the  cases  of  many  employers  and  employees,  as 
shown  in  numbers  cf  instances  carefully  investigated,  the  oppo- 
sition to  the  negro  ir,  industrial  pursuits  is  due  to  a  whimsical 
dislike  of  any  workman  who  is  not  white  and  especially  of  one 
who  is  black ! 

In  Southern  cities  negro  labor  is  the  main  dependence  and 
manual  labor  is  slow  to  lose  the  badge  of  servitude.  But  for 
selected  occupations  in  Southern  cities  between  1890  and  1900 
the  rate  of  increase  in  domestic  and  personal  service  occupations 
among  negroes  was  greater  than  that  in  manufacturing  and 
mechanical  pursuits,  and  than  that  in  trade  and  transportation,  if 
draymen,  hackmen,  and  teamsters  are  omitted  from  the  last  classi- 
fication. The  occupations  of  barbering,  whitewashing,  laundering, 
etc.  are  being  absorbed  by  white  men.  The  white  firemen  of  the 
Georgia  Railroad  and  Queen  and  Crescent  Railway  struck  because 
these  companies  insisted  upon  giving  negro  firemen  employment 
on  desirable  trains.  These  are  indications  of  a  possible  condition 
when  the  desire  of  white  men  for  places  held  by  negroes  becomes 
a  matter  of  keen  competition. 

When  it  comes  to  the  question  of  business  experience  and 
opportunity,  the  sea  is  still  thicker  with  reefs  and  shoals.  A  negro 
who  wants  training  and  experience  in  some  line  of  business  that 
he  may  begin  some  enterprise  of  his  own,  finds,  except  in  very 
rare  cases,  the  avenues  to  positions  in  white  establishments  which 
would  give  him  this  experience  closed.  The  deadline  of  his  desirq 


RACE  SEGREGATION  AND  DISCRIMINATION       747 

is  a  messenger's  place  or  a  porter's  job.  How  can  a  porter  learn 
to  run  a  mercantile  establishment  or  a  messenger  understand  how 
to  manage  a  bank  ?  His  only  alternative,  inexperienced  as  he  may 
be,  is  to  risk  his  meager  savings  in  venturing  upon  an  unsounded 
sea.  Shipwreck  is  necessarily  the  rule,  and  successful  voyage 
the  exception. 

The  successes,  however,  in  both  industry  and  trade  are  multi- 
plying, and  with  substantial  encouragement  may  change  the  rule 
to  exception  in  the  teeth  of  excessive  handicaps.  There  was  an 
increase  between  1890  and  1900  of  n.6  per  cent  of  negroes 
engaged  in  selected  skilled  and  semi-skilled  occupations  in  South- 
ern cities.  In  1910  the  executive  council  of  the  American  Fed- 
eration of  Labor  unanimously  passed  a  resolution  inviting  negroes, 
along  with  other  races,  into  its  ranks.  Some  of  its  affiliated  bodies 
have  shown  active  sympathy  with  this  sentiment,  and  have  taken 
steps  in  different  cities  to  bring  in  negro  workmen.  All  of  eleven 
negro  inventors  of  1911  were  city  dwellers.  The  "  Freedmen's 
Bank,"  which  had  branches  in  about  thirty-five  cities  and  towns, 
failed  in  1873.  During  its  existence  it  held  deposits  of  over  $50,- 
000,000  of  savings  of  the  freedmen.  Although  the  confidence 
of  the  freedmen  was  shaken  to  its  foundation,  they  have  rallied 
and  in  1911  there  were  64  private  negro  banks  in  the  towns  and 
cities  of  the  country.  Many  of  these  are  thriving  institutions. 
There  is  no  means  of  knowing  the  number  and  importance  of 
other  negro  business  enterprises.  But  judging  from  studies  of 
negro  business  enterprises  made  in  Philadelphia  and  in  New  York 
City,  and  from  the  widespread  attendance  upon  the  annual  meet- 
ings of  the  National  Negro  Business  League,  substantial  progress 
is  triumphing  over  unusual  obstacles. 

Crowded  into  segregated  districts  ;  living  in  poor  houses  for  the 
most  part  for  which  they  pay  high  rentals  ;  often  untaught  and 
without  teachers  in  the  requirements  of  town  life ;  walled  in  by 
inefficiency,  lack  of  training  and  the  chance  to  get  the  training ; 
usually  restricted  from  well-paid  occupations  by  the  prejudice  of 
fellow  employees  and  frequently  by  the  prejudice  of  employers  ; 
with  a  small  income  and  the  resulting  low  standard  of  living,  the 
wonder  is  not  that  negroes  have  a  uniformly  higher  death  rate 


748  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

than  whites  in  the  cities  and  towns,  but  that  the  mortality  is  as 
small  as  it  is  and  shows  signs  of  decrease.  Forced  by  municipal 
indifferences  or  design  in  many  cities  to  live  in  districts  con- 
taminated by  houses  and  persons  of  ill  fame ;  unable  often  to 
drive  from  their  residential  districts  saloons  and  dens  of  vice ; 
feeling  the  pressure  of  the  less  moral  elements  of  both  races, 
and  feeling  that  weight  of  police  and  courts  which  the  poor  and 
the  oppressed  undoubtedly  experience,  the  marvel  is  not  that  the 
criminal  records  outrun  other  elements  of  our  urban  population, 
but  that  impartial  observers  both  North  and  South  testify  to  the 
large  law-abiding  negro  citizenship  and  to  the  thousands  of  pure 
individuals,  Christian  homes  and  communities.1 

In  speaking  of  the  negro  death  rate  in  Southern  cities,  Fred- 
erick L.  Hoffman,  who  cannot  be  charged  with  favorable  bias, 
said  in  1906,  "without  exception,  the  death  rates  are  materially 
in  excess  of  the  corresponding  death  rates  of  the  white  popula- 
tion, but  there  has  also  been  in  this  case  a  persistent  decline  in 
the  general  death  rate  from  38.1  per  1000  in  1871  to  32.9  in 
1886  and  28.1  in  1904."  Data  from  other  investigations  for 
five  Southern  cities  (three  cities  not  included  in  Mr.  Hoffman's 
studies)  show  results  similar  to  his.  Figures  for  the  death  rate 
of  negroes  in  Northern  cities  are  not  available. 

Infant  mortality,  tuberculosis,  and  pneumonia  are  chief  causes 
of  the  excessive  death  rate.  Negroes  in  cities  have  an  excessive 
number  of  female  breadwinners,  and  a  large  proportion  of  these 
are  married  women.  The  neglect  of  the  child,  while  the  mother 
is  "working  out"  during  the  long  hours  of  domestic  service,  and 
ignorance  of  child  nurture  are  the  ingredients  of  the  soothing- 
syrup  which  lulls  thousands  of  small  children  into  the  sleep  of 
death.  Undernourishment  due  to  low  pay,  bad  housing,  poor 
sanitation,  ignorant  fear  of  "  night  air,"  and  lack  of  understand- 
ing of  the  dangers  of  infection,  make  negroes  the  prey  of  diseases 
now  clearly  proved  preventable.  With  an  aroused  public  con- 
science for  sanitation  and  adequate  leadership  in  education  on 
matters  of  health  these  conditions  are  gradually  removable. 

1  The  writer  has  had  to  condense  into  a  few  clauses  here  the  conclusions  from 
a  large  amount  of  testimony  and  facts. 


RACE  SEGREGATION  AND  DISCRIMINATION       749 

The  mental  and  moral  conditions  of  a  people  cannot  be  shown 
by  case  counting.  Tables  of  criminal  statistics  are  quite  as  much 
a  commentary  on  the  culture  conditions  of  the  whole  community 
as  upon  the  accused  negro.  The  best  study  of  crime  in  cities 
showed  that  down  to  1903  there  was  a  general  tendency  toward 
a  decrease  among  negroes.  Available  testimony  for  Southern 
cities  from  the  days  of  the  Freedmen's  Bureau  superintendence 
down  to  the  present  time  is  decidedly  in  favor  of  the  negro, 
even  under  an  archaic  penal  system.  Personal  observation  for 
fifteen  years  during  residence  in  and  repeated  visits  to  a  score 
of  the  larger  cities  and  a  number  of  the  smaller  ones,  leave  the 
writer  with  a  firm  conviction  of  decided  advancement.  The  in- 
telligence and  character  demanded  of  ministers,  teachers,  doctors, 
lawyers  and  other  professional  classes,  the  drawing  of  social  lines 
based  upon  individual  worth,  the  improved  type  of  amusement 
and  recreation  frequently  in  evidence,  and  similar  manifestations 
are  a  part  of  the  barometer  which  clearly  shows  progress. 

To  make  the  view  of  urban  situation  among  negroes  full  and 
clear,  a  number  of  conditions  which  exist  in  some  cities  but  are 
absent  in  others  should  be  included  in  the  list.  In  many  cities 
the  sequel  of  segregation  means  less  effective  police  patrol  and 
inadequate  fire  protection ;  in  others  it  means  unpaved  streets, 
the  absence  of  proper  sewerage  and  lack  of  other  sanitary  super- 
vision and  requirements. 

The  provision  which  people  have  for  the  play  life  of  their 
children  and  themselves  is  nearly  as  important  as  the  conditions  of 
labor.  Facilities  for  amusement  and  recreation,  then,  are  of  great 
importance  to  the  negro.  Wholesome  amusement  for  all  the  people 
is  just  beginning  to  receive  deserved  attention.  But  the  negro  is  in 
danger  of  being  left  out  of  account  in  the  movement.  Playgrounds 
in  negro  neighborhoods  are  so  rare  as  to  excite  curiosity,  and  or- 
ganized play  is  just  being  heard  of  in  the  negro  world.  There  is 
hardly  a  city  where  unhindered  access  to  theaters  and  moving  pic- 
ture shows  exists.  In  a  few  Southern  cities  "  negro  parks  "  of 
fair  attractiveness  are  being  provided  because  exclusion  from  pub- 
lic parks  used  by  whites  has  been  the  custom.  Here  and  there 
enterprising  negroes  are  starting  playhouses  for  their  own  people. 


750  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

In  the  provision  for  education  the  opportunity  of  the  city 
negro  is  much  greater  than  that  of  his  rural  brother.  Yet,  while 
one  rejoices  over  this  fact,  candor  compels  consideration  of  the 
relative  educational  chances  of  the  black  boy  and  the  white  one. 
Some  of  the  Northern  cities  which  have  no  official  or  actual 
separation  in  public  schools  may  be  passed  without  scrutiny. 
In  others  and  in  some  border  cities  like  St.  Louis,  Washington, 
and  Louisville,  where  there  are  separate  schools,  the  standards 
and  equipment  for  the  negro  schools  compare  favorably.  Also  a 
large  meed  of  praise  is  due  Southern  communities  for  the  great 
advance  which  has  been  made  in  public  opinion  and  financial 
support  for  negro  education.  Yet,  in  many  cities,  although  local 
pride  may  apply  names  and  give  glowing  descriptions,  those  who 
have  seen  the  public-school  systems  at  close  range  know  that  they 
are  poor  compared  with  white  schools  in  the  same  places.  The 
bona-fide  negro  public  high  schools  in  the  cities  of  the  South  can 
be  counted  on  the  fingers  of  the  two  hands.  Public  schools  all 
over  the  land  have  been  tardy  to  the  call  of  the  educational  needs 
of  the  masses  of  the  people.  The  "  dead  hand  "  of  past  aims, 
content,  and  methods  of  education  still  clasps  many  communities 
in  its  icy  grip.  It  is  well-nigh  impossible  to  tell  in  a  generalized 
statement  the  significance  of  this  condition  as  applied  to  the 
city  negro.  The  hopeful  sign  of  the  situation  is  the  awakening 
of  the  South  to  the  need. 

The  recital  of  the  foregoing  facts  and  conclusions  would  be  of 
little  consequence  unless  it  led  somewhere.  The  summary  of  the 
discussion  presents  a  clear  case  of  a  large  nation-wide  negro  mi- 
gration to  towns  and  cities,  such  as  is  taking  place  among  the 
entire  people  ;  a  segregation  within  the  city  of  negroes  into  dis- 
tinct neighborhoods  with  a  decreasing  contact  with  the  larger  com- 
munity and  its  impulses  ;  accompanying  housing,  economic,  health, 
moral,  educational,  and  other  conditions  which  are  more  critical  and 
are  receiving  less  attention  than  similar  problems  among  the  white 
people.  With  such  a  problem  before  us,  what  should  be  done  ? 

i.  There  should  be  an  organized  effort  to  acquaint  the  negro 
in  the  country  with  the  desirability  of  his  remaining  where  he 
is  unless  by  education  and  training  he  is  prepared  to  meet  the 


RACE  SEGREGATION  AND  DISCRIMINATION       751 

exactions  of  adjustments  to  city  life.  The  roseate  picture  of  city 
existence  should  be  corrected.  Simultaneously  with  the  agricul- 
tural and  other  improvements  of  country  life  calculated  to  make 
its  economic  and  social  conditions  more  attractive  should  go  an 
effort  to  minimize  the  activities  of  labor  agents,  employment- 
agency  sharks,  and  the  other  influences  that  lure  the  rustics 
from  home. 

2.  Recognizing  that  already  more  than  two  score  cities  and 
towns  have  large  negro  populations  in  the  first  stages  of  adjust- 
ment, organized  effort  should  be  made  to  help  the  negro  to  learn 
to  live  in  town.    The  thoughtful  white  and  colored  people  in  each 
community  will  have  to  break  the  bonds  of  this  increasing  segre- 
gation and  come  into  some  form  of  organized  community  coopera- 
tion.   The  danger  most  to  be  feared  is  antagonism  between  the 
better  element  of  both  races,  because  they  may  not  know  and  un- 
derstand each  other.    The  meeting  on  the  high  levels  of  mutual 
sympathy  and  cooperation  will  work  wonders  with  prejudices  and 
conventional  barriers. 

3.  The  cooperative  movement  of  the  white  and  colored  citizens 
of  each  locality  should  work  out  a  community  program  for  the 
neighborhood,  housing,  economic,  educational,  religious,  and  other 
improvement  of  the  negro.    The  time  is  at  hand  when  we  should 
not  let  this  matter  longer  drift. 

4.  Such  a  movement  should  sooner  or  later  become  conscious 
of  the  national  character  of  the  problem  and  the  towns  and  cities 
should  unite  for  the  exchange  of  plans,  methods,  and  experience 
and  for  general  cooperation  and  for  developing  needed  enthusiasm. 

5.  The  negro  must  have  more  and  better  trained  leadership 
in  these  local  situations.    Slowly  but  surely  we  are  listening  to  the 
lesson  of  group  psychology  and  common  sense  and  are  beginning 
to  use  the  most  direct  way  of  influencing  the  customs  and  habits 
of  a  people  by  giving  them  teachers  and  exemplars  of  their  own 
kind.    If  the  negro  is  to  be  lifted  to  the  full  stature  of  American 
civilization,  he  must  have  leaders  —  wise,  well-trained  leaders  — 
who  are  learned  in  the  American  ways  of  thinking  and  of  doing 
things.    And  it  should  never  be  forgotten  that  the  negro  himself 
has  valuable  contributions  to  make  to  American  life. 


752  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

6.  The  final  suggestion  is  that  the  white  people  of  each  locality 
can  best  foster  mutual  confidence  and  cooperation  of  negroes  by 
according  them  impartial  community  justice.  This  means  a  "square 
deal  "  in  industry,  in  education,  and  in  other  parts  of  the  common 
life.  It  means  equality  of  opportunity. 

71.  THE  RESULTS  OF  COLOR  PREJUDICE1 

In  the  negro's  mind  color  prejudice  in  Philadelphia  is  that 
widespread  feeling  of  dislike  for  his  blood  which  keeps  him  and 
his  children  out  of  decent  employment,  from  certain  public  con- 
veniences and  amusements,  from  hiring  houses  in  many  sections, 
and,  in  general,  from  being  recognized  as  a  man.  Negroes  regard 
this  prejudice  as  the  chief  cause  of  their  present  unfortunate  condi- 
tion. On  the  other  hand  most  white  people  are  quite  unconscious 
of  any  such  powerful  and  vindictive  feeling ;  they  regard  color 
prejudice  as  the  easily  explicable  feeling  that  intimate  social  inter- 
course with  a  lower  race  is  not  only  undesirable  but  impracticable 
if  our  present  standards  of  culture  are  to  be  maintained  ;  and 
although  they  are  aware  that  some  people  feel  the  aversion  more 
intensely  than  others,  they  cannot  see  how  such  a  feeling  has 
much  influence  on  the  real  situation,  or  alters  the  social  condition 
of  the  mass  of  negroes. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  color  prejudice  in  this  city  is  something 
between  these  two  extreme  views  :  it  is  not  to-day  responsible 
for  all,  or  perhaps  the  greater  part  of  the  negro  problems,  or  of 
the  disabilities  under  which  the  race  labors  ;  on  the  other  hand 
it  is  a  far  more  powerful  social  force  than  most  Philadelphians 
realize.  The  practical  results  of  the  attitude  of  most  of  the 
inhabitants  of  Philadelphia  toward  persons  of  negro  descent  are 
as  follows  : 

i .  As  to  getting  work  : 

No  matter  how  well  trained  a  negro  may  be,  or  how  fitted  for 
work  of  any  kind,  he  cannot  in  the  ordinary  course  of  competi- 
tion hope  to  be  much  more  than  a  menial  servant. 

1  By  W.  E.  B.  DuBois.  From  The  Philadelphia  ATegro,  pp.  322-325.  Publica- 
tions of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  Philadelphia,  1899. 


RACE  SEGREGATION  AND  DISCRIMINATION       753 

He  cannot  get  clerical  or  supervisory  work  to  do  save  in 
exceptional  cases. 

He  cannot  teach  save  in  a  few  of  the  remaining  negro  schools. 

He  cannot  become  a  mechanic  except  for  small  transient  jobs, 
and  cannot  join  a  trades  union. 

A  negro  woman  has  but  three  careers  open  to  her  in  this 
city :  domestic  service,  sewing,  or  married  life. 

2.  As  to  keeping  work  : 

The  negro  suffers  in  competition  more  severely  than  white  men. 

Change  in  fashion  is  causing  him  to  be  replaced  by  whites  in 
the  better  .paid  positions  of  domestic  service. 

Whim  and  accident  will  cause  him  to  lose  a  hard-earned  place 
more  quickly  than  the  same  things  would  affect  a  white  man. 

Being  few  in  number  compared  with  the  whites  the  crime  or 
carelessness  of  a  few  of  his  race  is  easily  imputed  to  all,  and  the 
reputation  of  the  good,  industrious,  and  reliable  suffer  thereby. 

Because  negro  workmen  may  not  often  work  side  by  side  with 
white  workmen,  the  individual  black  workman  is  rated  not  by  his 
own  efficiency,  but  by  the  efficiency  of  a  whole  group  of  black 
fellow  workmen  which  may  often  be  low. 

Because  of  these  difficulties,  which  virtually  increase  competi- 
tion in  his  case,  he  is  forced  to  take  lower  wages  for  the  same 
work  than  white  workmen. 

3.  As  to  entering  new  lines  of  work  : 

Men  are  used  to  seeing  negroes  in  inferior  positions  ;  when, 
therefore,  by  any  chance  a  negro  gets  in  a  better  position,  most 
men  immediately  conclude  that  he  is  not  fitted  for  it,  even  before 
he  has  a  chance  to  show  his  fitness. 

If,  therefore,  he  set  up  a  store,  men  will  not  patronize  him. 

If  he  gain  a  position  in  the  commercial  world,  men  will  quietly 
secure  his  dismissal  or  see  that  a  white  man  succeeds  him. 

4.  As  to  his  expenditure  : 

The  comparative  smallness  of  the  patronage  of  the  negro,  and  the 
dislike  of  other  customers,  make  it  usual  to  increase  the  charges  or 
difficulties  in  certain  directions  in  which  a  negro  must  spend  money. 

He  must  pay  more  house  rent  for  worse  houses  than  most 
white  people  pay. 


754  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

He  is  sometimes  liable  to  insult  or  reluctant  service  in  some 
restaurants,  hotels,  and  stores,  at  public  resorts,  theaters,  and  places 
of  recreation,  and  at  nearly  all  barber  shops. 

5.  As  to  his  children  : 

The  negro  finds  it  extremely  difficult  to  rear  children  in  such 
an  atmosphere  and  not  have  them  either  cringing  or  impudent : 
if  he  impresses  upon  them  patience  with  their  lot,  they  may  grow 
up  satisfied  with  their  condition  ;  if  he  inspires  them  with  ambi- 
tion to  rise,  they  may  grow  to  despise  their  own  people,  hate  the 
whites,  and  become  embittered  with  the  world. 

His  children  are  discriminated  against,  often  in  public  schools. 

They  are  advised  when  seeking  employment  to  become  waiters 
and  maids. 

They  are  liable  to  species  of  insult  and  temptation  peculiarly 
trying  to  children. 

6.  As  to  social  intercourse : 

In  all  walks  of  life  the  negro  is  liable  to  meet  some  objection 
to  his  presence  or  some  discourteous  treatment ;  and  the  ties  of 
friendship  or  memory  seldom  are  strong  enough  to  hold  across 
the  color  line. 

If  an  invitation  is  issued  to  the  public  for  any  occasion,  the 
negro  can  never  know  whether  he  would  be  welcomed  or  not ; 
if  he  goes  he  is  liable  to  have  his  feelings  hurt  and  get  into 
unpleasant  altercation  ;  if  he  stays  away  he  is  blamed  for 
indifference. 

If  he  meet  a  lifelong  white  friend  on  the  street,  he  is  in  a 
dilemma ;  if  he  does  not  greet  the  friend  he  is  put  down  as 
boorish  and  impolite ;  if  he  does  greet  the  friend  he  is  liable 
to  be  flatly  snubbed. 

If  by  chance  he  is  introduced  to  a  white  woman  or  man,  he 
expects  to  be  ignored  on  the  next  meeting,  and  usually  is. 

White  friends  may  call  on  him,  but  he  is  scarcely  expected  to 
call  on  them,  save  for  strictly  business  matters. 

If  he  gain  the  affections  of  a  white  woman  and  marry  her  he 
may  invariably  expect  that  slurs  will  be  thrown  on  her  reputation 
and  on  his,  and  that  both  his  and  her  race  will  shun  their 
company. 


RACE  SEGREGATION  AND  DISCRIMINATION       755 

When  he  dies  he  cannot  be  buried  beside  white  corpses.  .  .  . 

Any  one  of  these  things  happening  now  and  then  would  not 
be  remarkable  or  call  for  especial  comment ;  but  when  one  group 
of  people  suffer  all  these  little  differences  of  treatment  and  dis- 
criminations and  insults  continually,  the  result  is  either  discourage- 
ment, or  bitterness,  or  oversensitiveness,  or  recklessness.  And  a 
people  feeling  thus  cannot  do  their  best. 

72.    PROBLEMS  OF  CITIZENSHIP1 

The  negro  not  only  continues  to  be  a  hair-trigger  issue  in  at 
least  ten  states  of  the  Union,  but  the  very  fact  that  so  many  are 
now  prepared  for  citizenship  and  are  pressing  forward  to  use  with 
intelligence  the  rights  conferred  upon  them  by  the  Fifteenth 
Amendment,  gives  rise  to  new  and  very  serious  problems.  The 
status  of  the  negro  in  the  democracy  still  remains  unsettled. 
Thousands  of  Americans  believe  earnestly  that  no  negro,"  no 
matter  how  intelligent,  should  be  allowed  to  share  in  the  govern- 
ment, and  these  not  only  wish  to  throw  down  the  legal  barrier 
imposed  by  the  Fifteenth  Amendment,  but  do  their  best  by  state 
legislation,  or  by  artifice  at  the  primaries  or  at  elections,  to  nullify 
the  legal  rights  of  the  negro.  Other  thousands  of  Americans 
believe  that  all  negroes,  like  all  white  men,  should  have  the  full 
rights  of  citizenship.  And  between  these  two  extremes  exists 
every  shade  of  opinion.  As  for  the  negroes  themselves,  all  of 
them,  no  matter  what  diversities  of  opinion  there  may  be  among 
them  as  to  methods  of  progress,  are  pressing  steadily  forward  to 
become  real  participants  in  government ;  and  in  Northern  cities 
they  have  already  become  an  element  decidedly  to  be  reckoned 
with.  In  certain  Northern  states  like  Ohio  and  Indiana  the  negro 
vote  is  increasingly  important. 

Our  government  is  one  of  the  freest  in  the  world  in  the  matter 
of  suffrage  ;  and  yet  we  bar  out,  in  most  states,  all  women  ;  we 
bar  out  Mongolians,  no  matter  how  intelligent ;  we  bar  out 
Indians  and  all  foreigners  who  have  not  passed  through  a  certain 

1  By  Ray  Stannard  Baker.  Adapted  from  the  Annals  of  the  American  Academy 
of  Political  and  Social  Science,  Vol.  XLIX  (September,  1913),  pp.  94-104. 


756  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

probationary  stage  and  have  not  acquired  a  certain  small  amount 
of  education.  We  also  declare  —  for  an  arbitrary  limit  must  be 
placed  somewhere  —  that  no  person  under  twenty-one  years  may 
exercise  the  right  to  vote,  although  some  boys  of  eighteen  are 
to-day  as  well  equipped  to  pass  intelligently  upon  public  questions 
as  many  grown  men.  We  even  place  adult  white  men  on  proba- 
tion until  they  have  resided  for  a  certain  length  of  time,  often  as 
much  as  two  years,  in  the  state  or  town  where  they  wish  to  cast 
their  ballots.  Our  registration  and  ballot  laws  eliminate  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  voters,  and  finally  we  bar  out  everywhere  the 
defective  and  criminal  classes  of  our  population.  We  do  not 
realize,  sometimes,  I  think,  how  limited  the  franchise  really  is, 
even  in  America.  We  forget  that  out  of  over  90,000,000  people 
in  the  United  States  only  15,000,000  cast  their  votes  for  Presi- 
dent in  1912  —  or  about  one  in  every  six. 

Thus  the  practice  of  a  restricted  suffrage  is  very  deeply  im- 
planted in  our  system  of  government.  It  is  everywhere  recog- 
nized that  even  in  a  democracy  lines  must  be  drawn,  and  that  the 
ballot,  the  precious  instrument  of  the  government,  must  be  hedged 
about  with  stringent  regulations.  The  question  is,  Where  shall 
these  lines  be  drawn  in  order  that  the  best  interests,  not  of  any 
particular  class,  but  of  the  whole  nation  shall  be  served. 

No  one  can  say  dogmatically  how  far  democracy  should  go 
in  distributing  the  enormously  important  powers  of  active  govern- 
ment. Democracy  is  not  a  dogma ;  it  is  not  even  a  dogma  of 
free  suffrage.  Democracy  is  a  life,  a  spirit,  a  growth.  The  primal 
necessity  of  any  sort  of  government,  democratic  or  otherwise, 
whether  it  be  more  unjust  or  less  unjust  toward  special  groups 
of  its  citizens,  is  to  exist,  to  be  a  going  concern,  to  maintain 
upon  the  whole  a  stable  administration  of  affairs.  If  a  democracy 
cannot  provide  such  stability,  then  the  people  go  back  to  some 
form  of  oligarchy.  Having  secured  a  fair  measure  of  stability, 
a  democracy  proceeds  with  caution  toward  the  extension  of  the 
suffrage  to  more  and  more  people  —  trying  foreigners,  trying 
women,  trying  negroes. 

As  the  weight  of  responsibility  upon  the  popular  vote  is  in- 
creased, it  becomes  more  and  more  important  that  the  ballot 


RACE  SEGREGATION  AND  DISCRIMINATION       757 

should  be  jealously  guarded  and  honestly  exercised.  In  the  last 
few  years,  therefore,  a  series  of  extraordinary  new  precautions 
have  been  adopted  :  the  Australian  ballot,  more  stringent  regis- 
tration systems,  the  stricter  enforcement  of  naturalization  laws  to 
prevent  the  voting  of  crowds  of  unprepared  foreigners,  and  the 
imposition  by  several  states,  rightly  or  wrongly,  of  educational 
or  property  tests.  It  becomes  a  more  and  more  serious  matter 
every  year  to  be  an  American  citizen,  more  of  an  honor,  more 
of  a  duty. 

At  the  close  of  the  Civil  War,  in  a  time  of  intense  idealistic 
emotion,  some  three  quarters  of  a  million  of  negroes,  the  mass 
of  them  densely  ignorant  and  just  out  of  slavery,  with  the  iron 
of  slavery  still  in  their  souls,  were  suddenly  given  the  political 
rights  of  free  citizens.  A  great  many  people,  and  not  in  the 
South  alone,  thought  then,  and  still  think,  that  it  was  a  mistake 
to  bestow  the  high  powers  and  privileges  of  a  wholly  unrestricted 
ballot  —  a  ballot  which  is  the  symbol  of  intelligent  self-govern- 
ment—  upon  the  negro.  Other  people  believe  that  it  was  an 
unescapable  concomitant  of  the  revolution  ;  it  was  itself  a  revolu-  • 
tion,  not  a  growth,  and  like  every  other  revolution  it  had  its  fear- 
ful reaction.  Revolutions,  indeed,  change  names  but  they  do  not 
at  once  change  human  relationships.  Mankind  is  reconstructed 
not  by  proclamations,  or  legislation,  or  military  occupation,  but  by 
time,  growth,  religion,  thought.  At  that  time,  then,  the  nation 
drove  down  the  stakes  of  its  idealism  in  government  far  beyond 
the  point  which  it  was  able  to  reach  in  the  humdrum  activities  of 
everyday  existence.  A  reaction  was  inevitable  ;  it  was  inevitable 
and  perfectly  natural  that  there  should  be  a  widespread  question- 
ing as  to  whether  all  negroes,  or  indeed  any  negroes,  should 
properly  be  admitted  to  full  political  fellowship.  That  questioning 
continues  to  this  day. 

Now,  the  essential  principle  established  by  this  Fifteenth  Amend- 
ment to  the  Constitution  was  not  that  all  negroes  should  neces- 
sarily be  given  an  unrestricted  ballot ;  but  that  the  right  to  vote 
should  not  be  denied  or  abridged  "  on  account  of  race,  color,  or 
previous  condition  of  servitude."  This  amendment  wiped  out  the 
color  line  in  politics  so  far  as  any  written  law  could  possibly  do  it. 


758  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Let  me  here  express  my  profound  conviction  that  the  principle 
of  political  equality  then  laid  down  is  a  sound,  valid,  and  absolu- 
tely essential  principle  of  any  free  government ;  that  the  restric- 
tion upon  the  ballot,  when  necessary,  should  be  made  to  apply 
equally  to  white  and  colored  citizens,  and  that  the  Fifteenth 
Amendment  ought  not  to  be  repealed.  Moreover,  the  principle  of 
political  equality  is  more  firmly  established  to-day  than  it  was  forty 
years  ago,  when  it  had  only  Northern  bayonets  behind  it.  For 
now,  however  short  the  practice  falls  of  reaching  the  legal 
standard,  the  principle  is  woven  into  the  warp  and  woof  of 
Southern  life  and  Southern  legislation.  Not  a  few  Southern 
white  leaders  of  thought  are  to-day  convinced,  not  forced  believers 
in  the  principle,  and  that  is  a  great  omen. 

Let  me,  then,  lay  down  this  general  proposition : 

Nowhere  in  the  South  to-day  is  the  negro  cut  off  legally,  as  a 
negro,  from  the  ballot.  Legally,  to-day,  any  negro  who  can  meet 
the  comparatively  slight  requirements  as  to  education,  or  property, 
or  both,  can  cast  his  ballot  on  a  basis  of  equality  with  the  white 
man.  I  have  emphasized  the  word  legally,  for  I  know  the  prac- 
tical difficulties  which  confront  the  negro  voter  in  many  parts  of 
the  South.  In  the  enforcement  of  the  law  the  legislative  ideal 
is  still  pegged  out  far  beyond  the  actual  performance. 

If  we  are  interested  in  the  problem  of  democracy,  we  have  two 
courses  open  to  us.  We  may  think  the  laws  are  unjust  to  the 
negro,  and  incidentally  to  the  poor  white  man  as  well.  If  we  do 
we  have  a  perfect  right  to  agitate  for  a  change,  and  we  can  do 
much  to  disclose,  without  heat,  the  actual  facts  regarding  the 
complicated  and  vexatious  legislative  situation  in  the  South,  as 
regards  the  suffrage.  Every  change  in  the  legislation  upon  this 
subject  should,  indeed,  be  jealously  watched  that  the  principle  of 
political  equality  between  the  races  be  not  legally  curtailed.  The 
doctrine  laid  down  in  the  Fifteenth  Amendment  must,  at  any 
hazard,  be  maintained. 

But  I  think  our  emphasis  at  present  should  be  laid  upon  the 
practical  rather  than  upon  the  legal  aspect  of  the  problem.  I 
think  we  should  take  advantage  of  the  widely  prevalent  feeling 
in  the  South  that  the  question  of  suffrage  has  been  settled, 


RACE  SEGREGATION  AND  DISCRIMINATION       759 

legally,  for  some  time  to  come  ;  of  the  desire  on  the  part  of 
many  Southern  people,  both  white  and  colored,  to  turn  aside 
from  the  discussion  of  the  political  status  of  the  negro.  In  short, 
let  us  for  the  time  being  accept  the  laws  as  they  are,  and  build 
upward  from  that  point.  Let  us  turn  our  attention  to  the  practi- 
cal task  of  finding  out  why  it  is  that  the  laws  we  already  have 
are  not  enforced,  and  how  best  to  secure  an  honest  vote  for  every 
negro  and  equally  for  every  "poor  white"  man  (and  there  are 
thousands  of  him)  who  is  able  to  meet  the  requirements,  but  who 
for  one  reason  or  another  does  not  or  cannot  exercise  his  rights. 

Taking  up  this  side  of  the  question  we  shall  discover  two 
entirely  distinct  difficulties  : 

First,  we  shall  find  many  negroes,  and  indeed  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  white  men  as  well,  who  might  vote,  but  who  through 
ignorance,  or  the  inability  or  unwillingness  to  pay  poll  taxes,  or 
from  mere  lack  of  interest,  disfranchise  themselves. 

The  second  difficulty  is  peculiar  to  the  negro.  It  consists  in 
open  or  concealed  intimidation  on  the  part  of  the  white  men  who 
control  the  election  machinery.  In  many  places  in  the  South 
to-day  no  negro,  no  matter  how  well  qualified,  would  dare  to  pre- 
sent himself  for  registration.  When  he  does  he  is  often  rejected 
for  some  trivial  or  illegal  reason. 

Thus  we  have  to  meet  a  vast  amount  of  apathy  and  ignorance 
and  poverty  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  threat  of  intimidation  on 
the  other. 

First  of  all,  for  it  is  the  chief  injustice  as  between  white  and 
colored  men  with  which  we  have  to  deal  —  an  injustice  which  the 
law  already  makes  punishable  —  how  shall  we  meet  the  matter  of 
intimidation  ?  As  I  have  said  already  the  door  of  the  suffrage 
is  everywhere  legally  open  to  the  negro,  but  a  certain  sort  of 
Southerner  bars  the  passageway.  He  stands  there  and,  law  or  no 
law,  keeps  out  many  negroes  who  might  vote,  and  he  represents 
in  most  parts  of  the  South  the  prevailing  public  opinion. 

Shall  we  meet  this  situation  by  force  ?  What  force  is  avail- 
able ?  Shall  the  North  go  down  and  fight  the  South  ?  But  the 
North  to-day  has  no  feeling  but  friendship  for  the  South.  More 
than  that,  and  I  say  it  with  all  seriousness,  because  it  represents 


760  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

what  I  have  heard  wherever  I  have  gone  in  the  North  to  make 
inquiries  regarding  the  negro  problem,  the  North,  wrongly  or 
rightly,  is  to-day  more  than  half  convinced  that  the  South  is  right 
in  imposing  some  measure  of  limitation  upon  the  franchise. 
There  is  now,  in  short,  no  disposition  anywhere  in  the  North 
to  interfere  in  the  internal  affairs  of  the  South  —  not  even  with 
the  force  of  public  opinion. 

What  other  force,  then,  is  to  be  invoked  ?  Shall  the  negro 
revolt  ?  Shall  he  migrate  ?  The  very  asking  of  these  questions 
suggests  the  inevitable  reply. 

What  other  alternatives  are  there  ? 

Accepting  the  laws  as  they  are,  then,  there  are  two  methods 
of  procedure,  neither  sensational,  nor  exciting. 

The  underlying  causes  of  the  trouble  in  the  country  being 
plainly  ignorance  and  prejudice,  we  must  meet  ignorance  and 
prejudice  with  their  antidotes  :  education  and  association. 

Every  effort  should  be  made  to  extend  free  education  both 
among  negroes  and  white  people.  A  great  extension  of  educa- 
tion is  now  going  forward  in  the  South.  The  negro  is  not  by 
any  means  getting  his  full  share  (indeed,  he  is  getting  shame- 
fully less  than  his  share),  but  as  certainly  as  sunshine  makes 
things  grow,  education  in  the  South  will  produce  tolerance.  That 
there  is  already  such  a  growing  tolerance  no  one  who  has 
talked  with  the  leading  white  men  of  the  South  can  doubt.  The 
|pld  fire-eating,  negro-baiting  leaders  of  the  Tillman-Vardaman 
type  are  passing  away  :•  a  far  better  and  broader  group  is  coming 
Into  power. 

In  his  last  book  Mr.  Edgar  Gardner  Murphy,  of  Alabama, 
expresses  this  new  point  of  view  when  he  says : 

There  is  no  question  here  as  to  the  unrestricted  admission  (to  the  ballot)  of 
the  great  masses  of  our  ignorant  and  semi-ignorant  blacks.  I  know  no  advo- 
cate of  such  an  admission.  But  the  question  is  as  to  whether  the  individuals 
of  the  race,  upon  conditions  of  restriction  legally  imposed  and  fairly  admin- 
istered, shall  be  admitted  to  an  adequate  and  increasing  representation  in  the 
electorate.  And  as  that  question  is  more  seriously  and  more  generally  con- 
sidered, many  of  the  leading  publicists  of  the  South.  I  am  glad  to  say,  are 
quietly  resolved  that  the  answer  shall  be  in  the  affirmative. 


RACE  SEGREGATION  AND  DISCRIMINATION       761 

From  an  able  Southern  white  man,  a  resident  of  New  Orleans, 
I  received  only  recently  a  letter  containing  these  words : 

I  believe  we  have  reached  the  bottom,  and  a  sort  of  quiescent  period.  I 
think  it  most  likely  that  from  now  on  there  will  be  a  gradual  increase  in  the 
negro  vote.  And  I  honestly  believe  that  the  less  said  about  it,  the  surer  the 
increase  will  be. 

Education,  and  by  education  I  mean  education  of  all  sorts, 
industrial,  professional,  classical,  in  accordance  with  each  man's 
talents  will  not  only  produce  breadth  and  tolerance,  but  it  will 
help  to  cure  the  apathy  which  now  keeps  so  many  thousands  of 
both  white  men  and  negroes  from  the  polls  :  for  it  will  show 
them  that  it  is  necessary  for  every  man  to  exercise  all  the  polit- 
ical rights  within  his  reach.  For  if  he  fails  voluntarily  to  take 
advantage  of  the  rights  he  already  has,  how  shall  he  acquire 
more  rights  ? 

As  ignorance  must  be  met  by  education,  so  prejudice  must  be 
met  with  its  antidote,  which  is  association.  Democracy  does  not 
consist  in  mere  voting,  but  in  association,  the  spirit  of  common 
effort,  of  which  the  ballot  is  a  visible  expression.  When  we  come 
to  know  one  another  we  soon  find  that  the  points  of  likeness  are 
much  more  numerous  than  the  points  of  difference.  And  this 
human  association  for  the  common  good,  which  is  democracy,  is 
difficult  to  bring  about  anywhere,  whether  among  different  classes 
of  white  people,  or  between  white  people  and  negroes. 

After  the  Atlanta  riot  I  attended  a  number  of  conferences  be- 
tween leading  white  men  and  leading  colored  men.  It  is  true 
these  meetings  bore  evidence  of  awkwardness  and  embarrassment, 
for  they  were  among  the  first  of  that  sort  to  take  place  in  the 
South,  but  they  were  none  the  less  valuable.  A  white  man  told 
me  after  one  of  these  meetings  :  "  I  did  not  know  there  were 
any  such  sensible  negroes  in  the  South."  And  a  negro  told  me 
that  it  was  the  first  time  in  his  life  that  he  had  ever  heard  a 
Southern  white  man  reason  in  a  friendly  manner  with  a  negro 
concerning  their  common  difficulties. 

More  and  more  these  associations  of  white  and  colored  men, 
at  certain  points  of  contact,  must  and  will  come  about.  Already, 


762  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

in  connection  with  various  educational  and  business  projects  in 
the  South,  white  men  and  colored  men  meet  on  common  grounds, 
and  the  way  has  been  opened  to  a  wider  mutual  understanding. 
And  it  is  common  enough  now,  where  it  was  unheard  of  a  few 
years  ago,  for  both  white  men  and  negroes  to  speak  from  the 
same  platform  in  the  South.  I  have  attended  a  number  of  such 
meetings.  Thus  slowly,  awkwardly  at  first  —  for  two  centuries  of 
prejudice  are  not  easily  overcome  —  the  white  man  and  negro 
are  coming  to  know  each  other,  not  as  master  and  servant,  but 
as  co-workers.  These  things  cannot  be  forced. 

One  reason  why  the  white  man  and  the  negro  have  not  got 
together  more  rapidly  in  the  South  than  they  have,  is  because 
they  have  tried  always  to  meet  at  the  sorest  points.  When  sen- 
sible people,  who  must  live  together  whether  or  no,  find  that 
there  are  points  at  which  they  cannot  agree,  it  is  the  part  of  wis- 
dom to  avoid  those  points,  and  to  meet  upon  other  and  common 
interests.  Upon  no  other  terms,  indeed,  can  a  democracy  exist, 
for  in  no  imaginable  future  state  will  individuals  cease  to  dis- 
agree with  one  another  upon  something  less  than  half  of  all  the 
problems  of  life. 

"  Here  we  all  live  together  in  a  great  country,"  say  the  apostles 
of  this  view,  "  let  us  all  get  together  and  develop  it.  Let  the 
negro  do  his  best  to  educate  himself,  to  own  his  own  land,  and 
to  buy  and  sell  with  the  white  people  in  the  fairest  possible  way." 

Now,  buying  and  selling,  land  ownership,  and  common  material 
pursuits  may  not  be  the  highest  points  of  contact  between  man 
and  man,  but  they  are  real  points,  and  they  help  to  give  men  an 
idea  of  the  worth  of  their  fellows,  white  or  black.  How  many 
times,  in  the  South,  I  have  heard  a  white  man  speak  in  high 
admiration  of  some  negro  fanner  who  had  been  successful,  or 
of  some  negro  blacksmith  who  was  a  worthy  citizen,  or  some 
negro  doctor  who  was  a  leader  of  his  race. 

It  is  curious  once  a  man  (any  man,  white  or  black)  learns  to 
do  his  job  well  how  he  finds  himself  in  a  democratic  relation- 
ship with  other  men.  I  remember  asking  a  prominent  white 
citizen  of  a  town  in  central  Georgia  if  he  knew  anything  about 
Tuskegee.  He  said  ; 


RACE  SEGREGATION  AND  DISCRIMINATION       763 

Yes ;  I  had  rather  a  curious  experience  last  fall.  I  was  building  a  hotel  and 
could  n't  get  anyone  to  do  the  plastering  as  I  wanted  it  done.  One  day  I  saw 
two  negro  plasterers  at  work  in  a  new  house  that  a  friend  of  mine  was  build- 
ing. I  watched  them  for  an  hour.  They  seemed  to  know  their  trade.  I  invited 
them  to  come  over  and  see  me.  They  came,  took  the  contract  for  my  work, 
hired  a  white  man  to  carry  mortar  at  a  dollar  a  day,  and  when  they  got  through 
it  was  the  best  job  of  plastering  in  town.  I  found  that  they  had  learned  their 
trade  at  Tuskegee.  They  averaged  four  dollars  a  day  each  in  wages.  We  tried 
to  get  them  to  locate  in  our  town,  but  they  went  back  to  school. 

Out  of  such  crude  points  of  contact  will  grow  an  ever  finer  and 
finer  spirit  of  association  and  of  common  and  friendly  knowledge. 
And  that  will  lead  inevitably  to  an  extension  upon  the  soundest 
possible  basis  of  negro  franchise.  I  know  cases  where  white 
men  have  urged  intelligent  negroes  to  cast  their  ballots,  and  have 
stood  sponsor  for  them  out  of  genuine  respect.  To-day,  negroes 
who  vote  in  the  South  are,  as  a  class,  men  of  substance  and 
intelligence,  fully  equal  to  the  tasks  of  citizenship. 

Thus  I  have  confidence  not  only  in  the  sense  of  the  white  man 
in  the  South  but  in  the  innate  capability  of  the  negro  —  and 
that  once  these  two  really  come  to  know  each  other,  not  at  sore 
points  of  contact,  nor  as  mere  master  and  servant,  but  as  workers 
for  a  common  country,  the  question  of  suffrage  will  gradually 
solve  itself  in  the  interest  of  true  democracy. 

Another  influence  also  will  tend  to  change  the  status  of  the 
negro  as  a  voter.  That  is  the  pending  break-up  of  the  political 
solidarity  of  the  South.  All  the  signs  point  to  a  political  re- 
alignment upon  new  issues  in  this  country,  both  South  and  North. 
Old  party  names  may  even  pass  away.  And  that  break-up,  with 
the  attendant  struggle  for  votes,  is  certain  to  bring  into  politics 
thousands  of  negroes  and  white  men  now  disfranchised.  The 
result  of  a  real  division  on  live  issues  has  been  shown  in  many 
local  contests  in  the  South,  as  in  the  fight  against  the  saloons, 
when  every  qualified  negro  voter,  and  every  ne^ro  who  could 
qualify,  was  eagerly  pushed  forward  by  one  side  or  the  other. 
With  such  a  division  on  new  issues  the  negro  will  tend  to  exer- 
cise more  and  more  political  power,  dividing  not  on  the  color 
line,  but  on  the  principles  at  stake.  Still  another  influence  which 
is  helping  to  solve  the  problem  is  the  wider  diffusion  of  negroes 


764  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

throughout  the  country.  The  proportion  of  negroes  to  the  whites 
in  most  of  the  Southern  States  is  decreasing,  thereby  relieving 
the  fear  of  negro  domination,  whereas  negroes  are  increasing 
largely  in  Northern  communities,  where  they  take  their  place  in 
politics  not  as  an  indigestible  mass,  but  divide  along  party  lines 
even  more  readily  than  some  of  the  foreign-American  groups  in 
our  population.  A  study  of  the  negro  vote  in  November,  1912, 
would  show  that  many  negroes  broke  their  historic  allegiance 
with  the  Republican  party  and  voted  for  Roosevelt,  while  some 
even  cast  their  votes  for  Wilson ;  and  in  local  elections  the 
division  is  still  more  marked. 

Thus  in  spite  of  the  difficulties  which  now  confront  the  negro, 
I  cannot  help  looking  upon  the  situation  with  a  spirit  of  optimism. 
I  think  sometimes  we  are  tempted  to  set  a  higher  value  upon  the 
ritual  of  a  belief  than  upon  the  spirit  which  underlies  it.  The 
ballot  is  not  democracy ;  it  is  merely  the  symbol  or  ritual  of 
democracy,  and  it  may  be  full  of  passionate  social  significance, 
or  it  may  be  a  mere  empty  and  dangerous  formalism.  What 
we  should  look  to,  then,  primarily,  is  not  the  shadow,  but  the 
substance  of  democracy  in  this  country.  Nor  must  we  look  for 
results  too  swiftly ;  our  progress  toward  democracy  is  slow  of 
growth  and  needs  to  be  cultivated  with  patience  and  watered 
with  faith. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  NEGRO 

Booker  T.  Washington's  Atlanta  Exposition  address,  765.  —  Industrial  education 

and  the  public  schools,  769.  —  Argument  for  the  higher  education  of  the  negro,  774. 

—  A  brief  for  the  higher  education  of  the  negro,  777.  —  The  problem  from  an 

ethnologist's  point  of  view,  784. 

73.  ATLANTA  EXPOSITION  ADDRESS1 

One  third  of  the  population  of  the  South  is  of  the  negro  race. 
No  enterprise  seeking  the  material,  civil,  or  moral  welfare  of  this 
section  can  disregard  this  element  of  our  population  and  reach 
the  highest  success.  I  but  convey  to  you,  Mr.  President  and 
Directors,  the  sentiment  of  the  masses  of  my  race  when  I  say 
that  in  no  way  have  the  value  and  manhood  of  the  American 
negro  been  more  fittingly  and  generously  recognized  than  by  the 
managers  of  this  magnificent  Exposition  at  every  stage  of  its 
progress.  It  is  a  recognition  that  will  do  more  to  cement  the 
friendship  of  the  two  races  than  any  occurrence  since  the  dawn 
of  our  freedom. 

Not  only  this,  but  the  opportunity  here  afforded  will  awaken 
among  us  a  new  era  of  industrial  progress.  Ignorant  and  inex- 
perienced, it  is  not  strange  that  in  the  first  years  of  our  new  life 
we  began  at  the  top  instead  of  at  the  bottom  ;  that  a  seat  in 
Congress  or  the  state  legislature  was  more  sought  than  real 
estate  or  industrial  skill ;  that  the  political  convention  or  stump 
speaking  had  more  attractions  than  starting  a  dairy  farm  or 
truck  garden. 

1  By  Booker  T.  Washington.  From  Up  from  Slavery,  pp.  218-225.  Doubleday, 
Page  &  Company,  New  York,  1901.  This  Address,  delivered  September  18,  1895, 
at  the  opening  of  the  Cotton  States  and  International  Exposition  at  Atlanta, 
Georgia,  was  instantly  hailed  all  over  the  country  as  the  expression  of  a  new  and 
workable  standard  of  relations  between  blacks  and  whites  in  the  South. 

765 


766  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

A  ship  lost  at  sea  for  many  days  suddenly  sighted  a  friendly 
vessel.  From  the  mast  of  the  unfortunate  vessel  was  seen  a  sig- 
nal, "Water,  water;  we  die  of  thirst!"  The  answer  from  the 
friendly  vessel  at  once  came  back,  "  Cast  down  your  bucket  where 
you  are."  A  second  time  the  signal,  "  Water,  water ;  send  us 
water!  "  ran  up  from  the  distressed  vessel,  and  was  answered, 
"  Cast  down  your  bucket  where  you  are."  And  a  third  and  fourth 
signal  for  water  was  answered,  "  Cast  down  your  bucket  where 
you  are."  The  captain  of  the  distressed  vessel,  at  last  heeding 
the  injunction,  cast  down  his  bucket,  and  it  came  up  full  of  fresh, 
sparkling  water  from  the  mouth  of  the  Amazon  River.  To  those 
of  my  race  who  depend  on  bettering  their  condition  in  a  foreign 
land  or  who  underestimate  the  importance  of  cultivating  friendly 
relations  with  the  Southern  white  man,  who  is  their  next-door 
neighbor,  I  would  say  :  "  Cast  down  your  bucket  where  you  are  " 
—  cast  it  down  in  making  friends  in  every  manly  way  of  the 
people  of  all  races  by  whom  we  are  surrounded. 

Cast  it  down  in  agriculture,  in  mechanics,  in  commerce,  in  do- 
mestic service,  and  in  the  professions.  And  in  this  connection 
it  is  well  to  bear  in  mind  that  whatever  other  sins  the  South  may 
be  called  to  bear,  when  it  comes  to  business,  pure  and  simple,  it 
is  in  the  South  that  the  negro  is  given  a  man's  chance  in  the 
commercial  world,  and  in  nothing  is  this  Exposition  more  elo- 
quent than  in  emphasizing  this  chance.  Our  greatest  danger  is 
that  in  the  great  leap  from  slavery  to  freedom  we  may  overlook 
the  fact  that  the  masses  of  us  are  to  live  by  the  productions  of 
our  hands,  and  fail  to  keep  in  mind  that  we  shall  prosper  in  pro- 
portion as  we  learn  to  dignify  and  glorify  common  labor  and 
put  brains  and  skill  into  the  common  occupations  of  life  ;  shall 
prosper  in  proportion  as  we  learn  to  draw  the  line  between  the 
superficial  and  the  substantial,  the  ornamental  gewgaws  of  life 
and  the  useful.  No  race  can  prosper  till  it  learns  that  there  is 
as  much  dignity  in  tilling  a  field  as  in  writing  a  poem.  It  is  at 
the  bottom  of  life  we  must  begin,  and  not  at  the  top.  Nor  should 
we  permit  our  grievances  to  overshadow  our  opportunities. 

To  those  of  the  white  race  who  look  to  the  incoming  of  those 
of  foreign  birth  and  strange  tongue  and  habits  for  the  prosperity 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  NEGRO       767 

of  the  South,  were  I  permitted  I  would  repeat  what  I  say  to  my 
own  race,  "  Cast  down  your  bucket  where  you  are."  Cast  it  down 
among  the  eight  millions  of  negroes  whose  habits  you  know, 
whose  fidelity  and  love  you  have  tested  in  days  when  to  have 
proved  treacherous  meant  the  ruin  of  your  firesides.  Cast  down 
your  bucket  among  these  people  who  have,  without  strikes  and 
labor  wars,  tilled  your  fields,  cleared  your  forests,  builded  your 
railroads  and  cities,  brought  forth  treasures  from  the  bowels  of 
the  earth,  and  helped  make  possible  this  magnificent  represen- 
tation of  the  progress  of  the  South.  Casting  down  your  bucket 
among  my  people,  helping  and  encouraging  them  as  you  are  do- 
ing on  these  grounds,  and  to  education  of  head,  hand,  and  heart, 
you  will  find  that  they  will  buy  your  surplus  land,  make  blossom 
the  waste  places  in  your  fields,  and  run  your  factories.  While 
doing  this,  you  can  be  sure  in  the  future,  as  in  the  past,  that  you 
and  your  families  will  be  surrounded  by  the  most  patient,  faithful, 
law-abiding,  and  unresentful  people  that  the  world  has  seen.  As 
we  have  proved  our  loyalty  to  you  in  the  past,  in  nursing  your 
children,  watching  by  the  sick  bed  of  your  mothers  and  fathers, 
and  often  following  them  with  tear-dimmed  eyes  to  their  graves, 
so  in  the  future,  in  our  humble  way,  we  shall  stand  by  you  with 
a  devotion  that  no  foreigner  can  approach,  ready  to  lay  down  our 
lives,  if  need  be,  in  defense  of  yours,  interlacing  our  industrial, 
commercial,  civil,  and  religious  life  with  yours  in  a  way  that  shall 
make  the  interests  of  both  races  one.  In  all  things  that  are 
purely  social  we  can  be  as  separate  as  the  fingers,  yet  one  as 
the  hand  in  all  things  essential  to  mutual  progress. 

There  is  no  defense  or  security  for  any  of  us  except  in  the 
highest  intelligence  and  development  of  all.  If  anywhere  there 
are  efforts  tending  to  curtail  the  fullest  growth  of  the  negro, 
let  these  efforts  be  turned  into  stimulating,  encouraging,  and 
making  him  the  most  useful  and  intelligent  citizen.  Effort  or 
means  so  invested  will  pay  a  thousand  per  cent  interest.  These 
efforts  will  be  twice  blessed  —  "  blessing  him  that  gives  and 
him  that  takes." 

There  is  no  escape  through  law  of  man  or  God  from  the 
inevitable  :  — 


768  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

The  laws  of  changeless  justice  bind 

Oppressor  with  oppressed ; 
And  close  as  sin  and  suffering  joined 

We  march  to  fate  abreast. 

Nearly  sixteen  millions  of  hands  will  aid  you  in  pulling  the  load 
upward,  or  they  will  pull  against  you  the  load  downward.  We  shall 
constitute  one  third  and  more  of  the  ignorance  and  crime  of  the 
South,  or  one  third  its  intelligence  and  progress ;  we  shall  con- 
tribute one  third  to  the  business  and  industrial  prosperity  of  the 
South,  or  we  shall  prove  a  veritable  body  of  death,  stagnating, 
depressing,  retarding  every  effort  to  advance  the  body  politic. 

Gentlemen  of  the  Exposition,  as  we  present  to  you  our  humble 
effort  at  an  exhibition  of  our  progress,  you  must  not  expect  over- 
much. Starting  thirty  years  ago  with  ownership  here  and  there 
in  a  few  quilts  and  pumpkins  and  chickens  (gathered  from  mis- 
cellaneous sources),  remember  the  path  that  has  led  from  these  to 
the  inventions  and  production  of  agricultural  implements,  buggies, 
steam  engines,  newspapers,  books,  statuary,  carving,  paintings, 
the  management  of  drug  stores  and  banks,  has  not  been  trodden 
without  contact  with  thorns  and  thistles.  While  we  take  pride  in 
what  we  exhibit  as  a  result  of  our  independent  efforts,  we  do  not 
for  a  moment  forget  that  our  part  in  this  exhibition  would  fall 
far  short  of  your  expectations  but  for  the  constant  help  that  has 
come  to  our  educational  life,  not  only  from  the  Southern  states, 
but  especially  from  Northern  philanthropists,  who  have  made  their 
gifts  a  constant  stream  of  blessing  and  encouragement. 
I  The  wisest  among  my  race  understand  that  the  agitation  of 
questions  of  social  equality  is  the  extremest  folly,  and  that  prog- 
ress in  the  enjoyment  of  all  the  privileges  that  will  come  to  us 
must  be  the  result  of  severe  and  constant  struggle  rather  than  of 
artificial  forcing.  No  race  that  has  anything  to  contribute  to  the 
markets  of  the  world  is  long  in  any  degree  ostracized.  It  is  im- 
portant and  right  that  all  privileges  of  the  law  be  ours,  but  it  is 
vastly  more  important  that  we  be  prepared  for  the  exercises  of 
these  privileges.  The  opportunity  to  earn  a  dollar  in  a  factory 
just  now  is  worth  infinitely  more  than  the- opportunity  to  spend 
a  dollar  in  an  opera  house. 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  NEGRO       769 

In  conclusion,  may  I  repeat  that  nothing  in  thirty  years  has 
given  us  more  hope  and  encouragement,  and  drawn  us  so  near 
to  you  of  the  white  race,  as  this  opportunity  offered  by  the  Ex- 
position ;  and  here  bending,  as  it  were,  over  the  altar  that  rep- 
resents the  results  of  the  struggles  of  your  race  and  mine,  both 
starting  practically  empty-handed  three  decades  ago,  I  pledge 
that  in  your  effort  to  work  out  the  great  and  intricate  problem 
which  God  has  laid  at  the  doors  of  the  South,  you  shall  have  at 
all  times  the  patient,  sympathetic  help  of  my  race ;  only  let  this 
be  constantly  in  mind,  that,  while  from  representations  in  these 
buildings  of  the  product  of  field,  of  forest,  of  mine,  of  factory, 
letters,  and  art,  much  good  will  come,  yet  far  above  and  beyond 
material  benefits  will  be  that  higher  good,  that,  let  us  pray  God, 
will  come,  in  a  blotting  out  of  sectional  differences  and  racial 
animosities  apd  suspicions,  in  a  determination  to  administer  abso- 
lute justice,  in  a  willing  obedience  among  all  classes  to  the  man- 
dates of  law.  This,  this,  coupled  with  our  material  prosperity, 
will  bring  into  our  beloved  South  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth. 

74.    INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION  AND  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS1 

If  I  were  asked  what  I  believe  to  be  the  greatest  advance 
which  negro  education  has  made  since  emancipation  I  should  say 
that  it  had  been  in  two  directions  :  first,  the  change  which  has 
taken  place,  among  the  masses  of  the  negro  people,  as  to  what 
education  really  is  and,  second,  the  change  that  has  taken  place, 
among  the  masses  of  the  white  people,  in  the  South,  toward 
negro  education  itself. 

I  can  perhaps  make  clear  what  I  mean  by  a  little  explanation. 
The  negro  learned  in  slavery  to  work  but  he  did  not  learn  to 
respect  labor.  On  the  contrary,  the  negro  was  constantly  taught, 
directly  and  indirectly  during  slavery  times,  that  labor  was  a 
curse.  It  was  the  curse  of  Canaan,  he  was  told,  that  condemned 
the  black  man  to  be  for  all  time  the  slave  and  servant  of  the 
white  man.  It  was  the  curse  of  Canaan  that  made  him  for  all 

1  By  Booker  T.  Washington.  Adapted  from  the  Annals  of  the  American  Acad- 
emy of  Political  and  Social  Science,  Vol.  XLIX  (September,  1913),  pp.  226-232. 


770  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

time  "a  hewer  of  wood  and  drawer  of  water."  The  consequence 
of  this  teaching  was  that,  when  emancipation  came,  the  negro 
thought  freedom  must,  in  some  way,  mean  freedom  from  labor. 

The  negro  had  also  gained  in  slavery  some  general  notions  in 
regard  to  education.  He  observed  that  the  people  who  had  edu- 
cation for  the  most  part  belonged  to  the  aristocracy,  to  the  master 
class,  while  the  people  who  had  little  or  no  education  were 
usually  of  the  class  known  as  "  poor  whites."  In  this  way  educa- 
tion became  associated,  in  his  mind,  with  leisure,  with  luxury, 
and  freedom  from  the  drudgery  of  work  with  the  hands. 

Another  thing  that  the  negro  learned  in  slavery  about  educa- 
tion was  that  it  was  something  that  was  denied  to  the  man  who 
was  a  slave.  Naturally,  as  soon  as  freedom  came,  he  was  in  a 
great  hurry  to  get  education  as  soon  as  possible.  He  wanted 
education  more  than  he  wanted  land  or  property*  or  anything 
else,  except,  perhaps,  public  office.  Although  the  negro  had  no 
very  definite  notion  in  regard  to  education,  he  was  pretty  sure 
that,  whatever  else  it  might  be,  it  had  nothing  to  do  with  work, 
especially  work  with  the  hands. 

In  order  to  make  it  possible  to  put  negro  education  on  a 
sound  and  rational  basis,  it  has  been  necessary  to  change  the 
opinion  of  the  masses  of  the  negro  people  in  regard  to  education 
and  labor.  It  has  been  necessary  to  make  them  see  that  educa- 
tion which  did  not,  directly  or  indirectly,  connect  itself  with  the 
practical  daily  interests  of  daily  life  could  hardly  be  called  educa- 
tion. It  has  been  necessary  to  make  the  masses  of  the  negroes 
see  and  realize  the  necessity  and  importance  of  applying  what 
they  learned  in  school  to  the  common  and  ordinary  things  of  life ; 
to  see  that  education,  far  from  being  a  means  of  escaping  labor, 
is  a  means  of  raising  up  and  dignifying  labor  and  thus,  indirectly 
a  means  of  raising  up  and  dignifying  the  common  and  ordinary 
man.  It  has  been  necessary  to  teach  the  masses  of  the  people 
that  the  way  to  build  up  a  race  is  to  begin  at  the  bottom  and 
not  at  the  top,  to  lift  the  man  farthest  down,  and  thus  raise  the 
whole  structure  of  society  above  him. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  has  been  necessary  to  demonstrate  to 
the  white  man  in  the  South  that  education  does  not  "spoil"  the 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  NEGRO  771 

negro,  as  it  had  been  so  often  predicted  that  it  would.  It  was 
necessary  to  make  him  actually  see  that  education  makes  the 
negro  not  an  idler  or  spendthrift,  but  a  more  industrious,  thrifty, 
law-abiding,  and  useful  citizen  than  he  otherwise  would  be. 

As  there  never  was  any  hope  of  educating  the  great  mass  of  the 
negroes  in  the  South  outside  of  the  public  schools,  so  there  was 
no  hope  of  a  thoroughly  efficient  school  system  until  the  Southern 
white  man  was  convinced  that  negro  education  was  of  some  real 
value,  not  only  to  the  negro  himself,  but  also  to  the  community. 

The  task  of  changing  the  popular  opinion  of  both  races  in  the 
South  in  regard  to  the  value  and  meaning  of  negro  education, 
has  fallen  very  largely  to  the  industrial  schools.  The  first  great 
task  of  these  schools  has  been  to  teach  the  masses  of  the  negro 
people  that  every  form  of  labor  is  honorable  and  that  every  form 
of  idleness  is  disgraceful.  The  second  great  task  has  been  to 
prove  to  the  masses  of  the  Southern  people,  by  actual  living 
examples,  that  money  invested  in  negro  education  pays,  when 
that  education  is  real  and  not  a  sham. 

As  far  as  the  masses  of  the  negro  people  are  concerned,  this 
task  is  pretty  nearly  completed.  There  was  a  time  at  Tuskegee 
when  parents  objected  to  their  children  doing  work  with  the 
hands  in  connection  with  their  school  work.  They  said  they 
wanted  their  children  to  study  books,  and  the  more  books  and 
the  bigger  the  books,  the  better  they  were  satisfied.  At  the  pres- 
ent time  at  Tuskegee,  the  work  in  the  shops  and  on  the  farm  is 
just  as  interesting,  just  as  much  sought  after  by  pupils,  as  work 
in  the  classroom.  So  great  has  been  the  change  in  the  attitude 
of  the  masses  of  the  people  in  this  regard  that  a  school  which 
does  not  advertise  some  sort  of  industrial  training  finds,  it  difficult 
to  get  students.  At  the  present  time  almost  every  negro  school 
teaches  some  sort  of  industry  and  the  number  of  schools  which 
advertise  themselves  as  industrial  institutes  is  constantly  increas- 
ing. There  are,  for  example,  not  fewer  than  four  hundred  little 
schools  in  the  South  to  day  which  call  themselves  industrial 
schools,  although,  in  many  instances,  these  schools  are  doing 
little,  if  anything,  more  in  the  direction  of  industrial  training 
than  the  public  schools. 


772  .  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

But  if  there  has  been  a  change  in  the  opinion  of  the  masses 
of  the  colored  people  in  regard  to  education,  there  has  been  an 
equally  great  change  in  the  attitude  of  the  Southern  white  people 
in  regard  to  the  education  of  the  negro. 

There  never  was  a  time  when  the  thoughtful,  sober  people  in 
the  South  did  not  perceive  the  necessity  of  educating  the  negro, 
not  merely  for  the  sake  of  the  negro  himself,  but  for  the  sake 
of  the  South.  Some  of  the  strongest  and  wisest  friends  of 
negro  education  have  been  men  who  were  born  or  lived  in  the 
South.  The  Hon.  William  H.  Rufner,  who  inaugurated  the  first 
public-school  system  in  Virginia  and  was  state  superintendent  of 
education  in  that  state  from  1870  to  1882,  made  a  strong  and 
statesmanlike  plea  for  the  education  of  all  the  people,  black  and 
white,  in  his  first  annual  report.  From  that  day  to  this  there  have 
always  been  wise  and  courageous  men  in  the  South  who  were 
ready  at  all  times  to  go  out  of  their  way  to  urge  the  necessity  of 
giving  the  negro  equal  opportunities  with  the  white  man,  not 
only  for  education  but  also  for  advancement  in  every  other 
direction. 

On  the  other  hand  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  mass  of 
Southern  white  people  have  been  until  recent  years  either  pos- 
itively hostile  or  else  indifferent  toward  negro  education. 

No  one  who  studied  the  trend  of  opinion  in  the  South  can  fail 
to  realize  that  there  has  been  a  great  change  in  the  attitude  of 
the  white  people  of  the  South  in  regard  to  the  education  of  the 
negro  within,  say,  the  last  five  years.  There  is  every  evidence, 
at  the  present  time,  that  the  Southern  people  have  determined 
to  take  up  in  a  serious  way  the  education  of  the  negro,  and  the 
black  man  is  to  have  better  opportunities,  not  only  in  the  matter 
of  education,  but  also  in  every  other  direction. 

One  indication  of  this  changed  attitude  is  the  fact  that  all 
through  the  South  state  and  county  superintendents  are  begin- 
ning to  take  a  more  real  and  active  interest  in  the  progress  of 
the  negro  schools.  Five  Southern  States  have  already  appointed 
assistant  state  superintendents  of  schools  whose  sole  duty  will 
be  to  look  after  the  interest  of  the  negro  schools.  In  many 
instances  negro  supervisors  have  been  appointed  to  assist  the 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  NEGRO       773 

county  superintendents  in  the  work  of  improving  the  negro 
schools.  Usually  these  negro  supervisors  have  been  supported, 
in  whole  or  in  part,  by  funds  furnished  by  the  Anna  T.  Jeanes 
Fund  for  the  improvement  of  the  colored  rural  schools. 

What,  you  may  ask,  has  brought  about  this  change  of  senti- 
ment of  the  average  white  man  toward  the  colored  school  ? 

One  thing  that  has  done  as  much  as  anything  else  to  bring 
about  the  change  has  been  the  demonstration  farming  movement. 
Demonstration  farming  has  taught  the  average  farmer  the  impor- 
tance of  applying  science  and  skill  to  the  work  of  the  farm  and 
he  has  argued  that,  what  this  sort  of  education  has  done  for  the 
white  farmer  it  will  also  do  for  the  colored  farmer.  He  has  fore- 
seen, also,  that  the  education  which  makes  the  negro  a  better 
farmer  will  make  the  South  a  richer  community.  That  is  one 
reason  that  the  average  Southern  white  man  has  come  to  take 
an  interest  in  negro  education. 

Another  thing  that  has  helped  to  bring  about  this  change  is 
that  the  Southern  white  man  has  seen  for  himself  the  effects  of 
negro  education  upon  the  negro. 

There  is  no  way  in  which  industrial  schools,  like  Hampton 
and  Tuskegee,  have  done  more  to  change  the  sentiment  of  both 
races  in  regard  to  education  and  so  prepare  the  way  for  the 
building  up  of  a  real  and  efficient  system  of  negro  education  in 
the  South  than  in  the  character  of  the  graduates  that  have  gone 
out  from  these  schools  and  from  others,  to  work  in  the  rural 
communities  as  teachers  and  leaders,  and  to  illustrate  in  their 
own  lives  the  practical  value  of  the  education  they  have  obtained. 

In  referring  in  this  way  to  the  manner  in  which  the  industrial 
schools  have  helped  to  change  sentiment  and  create  sympathy  for 
negro  education  among  the  masses  of  the  white  people  in  the 
South  I  do  not  intend  to  say  that  the  graduates  of  other  institu- 
tions, with  different  aims,  have  not  done  their  part.  I  merely 
intend  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  the  industrial  schools  have 
made  it  part  of  their  program  to  connect  the  work  in  the  schools 
with  the  practical  interests  of  the  people  about  them,  and  that 
they  have  everywhere  sought  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  the  func- 
tion of  the  school  is  not  merely  to  teach  a  certain  number  of 


774  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

classroom  studies  to  a  certain  number  of  students,  but  to  use  the 
school  as  a  means  for  building  up  and  improving  the  moral  and 
material  life  of  the  communities  in  which  these  schools  are 
located. 

75.    ON  THE  TRAINING  OF  BLACK  MEN1 

The  dangerously  clear  logic  of  the  negro's  position  will  more 
and  more  loudly  assert  itself  in  that  day  when  increasing  wealth 
and  more  intricate  social  organization  preclude  the  South  from 
being,  as  it  so  largely  is,  simply  an  armed  camp  for  intimidating 
black  folk.  Such  waste  of  energy  cannot  be  spared  if  the  South 
is  to  catch  up  with  civilization.  And  as  the  black  third  of  the 
land  grows  in  thrift  and  skill,  unless  skillfully  guided  in  its  larger 
philosophy,  it  must  more  and  more  brood  over  the  red  past  and 
the  creeping,  crooked  present,  until  it  grasps  a  gospel  of  revolt 
and  revenge  and  throws  its  new-found  energies  athwart  the  cur- 
rent of  advance.  Even  to-day  the  masses  of  the  negroes  see  all 
too  clearly  the  anomalies  of  their  position  and  the  moral  crooked- 
ness of  yours.  You  may  marshal  strong  indictments  against  them, 
but  their  counter-cries,  lacking  though  they  be  in  formal  logic, 
have  burning  truths  within  them  which  you  may  not  wholly 
ignore,  O  Southern  Gentlemen  !  If  you  deplore  their  presence 
here,  they  ask,  Who  brought  us  ?  When  you  cry,  Deliver  us 
from  the  vision  of  intermarriage,  they  answer  that  legal  marriage 
is  infinitely  better  than  systematic  concubinage  and  prostitution. 
And  if  in  just  fury  you  accuse  their  vagabonds  of  violating 
women,  they  also  in  fury  quite  as  just  may  reply :  The  rape  which 
your  gentlemen  have  done  against  helpless  black  women  in  defi- 
ance of  your  own  laws  is  written  on  the  foreheads  of  two  millions 
of  mulattoes,  and  written  in  ineffaceable  blood.  And  finally,  when 
you  fasten  crime  upon  this  race  as  its  peculiar  trait,  they  answer 
that  slavery  was  the  arch-crime,  and  lynching  and  lawlessness  its 
twin  abortion  ;  that  color  and  race  are  not  crimes,  and  yet  they 
it  is  which  in  this  land  receive  most  unceasing  condemnation, 
North,  East,  South,  and  West. 

1  By  \V.  E.  B.  DuHois.  From  The  Souls  of  Black  Folk,  8th  edition,  pp.  105-109. 
A.  ('.  McClurg  &  Co.,  Chicago,  1909. 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  NEGRO  775 

I  will  not  say  such  arguments  are  wholly  justified,  —  I  will 
not  insist  that  there  is  no  other  side  to  the  shield ;  but  I  do  say 
that  of  the  nine  millions  of  negroes  in  this  nation,  there  is 
scarcely  one  out  of  the  cradle  to  whom  these  arguments  do  not 
daily  present  themselves  in  the  guise  of  terrible  truth.  I  insist 
that  the  question  of  the  future  is  how  best  to  keep  those  millions 
from  brooding  over  the  wrongs  of  the  past  and  the  difficulties  of 
the  present,  so  that  all  their  energies  may  be  bent  toward  a  cheer- 
ful striving  and  cooperation  with  their  white  neighbors  toward  a 
larger,  juster,  and  fuller  future.  That  one  wise  method  of  doing 
this  lies  in  the  closer  knitting  of  the  negro  to  the  great  industrial 
possibilities  of  the  South  is  a  great  truth.  And  this  the  common 
schools  and  the  manual-training  and  trade  schools  are  working  to 
accomplish.  But  these  alone  are  not  enough.  The  foundations 
of  knowledge  in  this  race,  as  in  others,  must  be  sunk  deep  in 
the  college  and  university  if  we  would  build  a  solid,  permanent 
structure.  Internal  problems  of  social  advance  must  inevitably 
come,  —  problems  of  work  and  wages,  of  families  and  homes,  of 
morals  and  the  true  valuing  of  the  things  of  life ;  and  all  these 
and  other  inevitable  problems  of  civilization  the  negro  must  meet 
and  solve  largely  for  himself,  by  reason  of  his  isolation ;  and  can 
there  be  any  possible  solution  other  than  by  study  and  thought 
and  an  appeal  to  the  rich  experience  of  the  past  ?  Is  there  not, 
with  such  a  group,  and  in  such  a  crisis,  infinitely  more  danger  to 
be  apprehended  from  half-trained  minds  and  shallow  thinking 
than  from  over  education  and  over  refinement  ?  Surely  we  have 
wit  enough  to  found  a  negro  college  so  manned  and  equipped 
as  to  steer  successfully  between  the  dilettante  and  the  fool.  We 
shall  hardly  induce  black  men  to  believe  that  if  their  stomachs 
be  full,  it  matters  little  about  their  brains.  They  already  perceive 
that  the  paths  of  peace  winding  between  honest  toil  and  dignified 
manhood  call  for  the  guidance  of  skilled  thinkers,  the  loving, 
reverent  comradeship  between  the  black  lowly  and  the  black 
men  emancipated  by  training  and  culture. 

The  function  of  the  negro  college,  then,  is  clear :  it  must 
maintain  the  standards  of  popular  education,  it  must  seek  the 
social  regeneration  of  the  negro,  and  it  must  help  in  the  solution 


77<3  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  problems  of  race  contact  and  cooperation.  And  finally,  beyond 
all  this,  it  must  develop  men.  Above  our  modern  socialism,  and 
out  of  the  worship  of  the  mass,  must  persist  and  evolve  that 
higher  individualism  which  the  centers  of  culture  protect ;  there 
must  come  a  loftier  respect  for  the  sovereign  human  soul  that 
seeks  to  know  itself  and  the  world  about  it ;  that  seeks  a  freedom 
of  expansion  and  self-development ;  that  will  love  and  hate  and 
labor  in  its  own  way,  untrammeled  alike  by  old  and  new.  Such 
souls  aforetime  have  inspired  and  guided  worlds,  and  if  we  be 
not  wholly  bewitched  by  our  Rhine-gold,  they 'shall  again.  Herein 
the  longing  of  black  men  must  have  respect :  the  rich  and  bitter 
depth  of  their  experience,  the  unknown  treasures  of  their  inner 
life,  the  strange  rendings  of  nature  that  they  have  seen,  may  give 
the  world  new  points  of  view  and  make  their  loving,  living,  and 
doing  precious  to  all  human  hearts.  And  to  themselves  in  these 
days  that  try  their  souls,  the  chance  to  soar  in  the  dim  blue  air 
above  the  smoke  is  to  their  finer  spirits  boon  and  guerdon  for 
what  they  lose  on  earth  for  being  black. 

I  sit  with  Shakespeare  and  he  winces  not.  Across  the  color 
line  I  move  arm  in  arm  with  Balzac  and  Dumas,  where  smiling 
men  and  welcoming  women  glide  in  gilded  halls.  From  out  of 
the  caves  of  evening  that  swing  between  the  strong-limbed  earth 
and  the  tracery  of  the  stars,  I  summon  Aristotle  and  Aurelius 
and  what  soul  I  will,  and  they  come  all  graciously  with  no  scorn 
nor  condescension.  So,  wed  with  Truth,  I  dwell  above  the  Veil. 
Is  this  the  life  you  grudge  us,  O  knightly  America  ?  Is  this  the 
life  you  long  to  change  to  the  dull  red  hideousness  of  Georgia  ? 
Are  you  so  afraid  lest  peering  from  this  high  Pisgah,  between 
Philistine  and  Amalekite,  we  see  the  Promised  Land  ? 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  NEGRO  777 

76.   A  BRIEF  FOR  THE  HIGHER  EDUCATION  OF 
THE  NEGRO1 

Ridicule  and  contempt  have  characterized  the  habitual  attitude 
of  the  American  mind  toward  the  negro's  higher  strivings. 
The  African  was  brought  to  this  country  for  the  purpose  of  per- 
forming manual  and  menial  labor.  His  bodily  powers  alone  were 
required  to  accomplish  this  industrial  mission.  No  more  account 
was  taken  of  his  higher  susceptibilities  than  of  the  mental  and 
moral  faculties  of  the  lower  animals.  As  the  late  Mr.  Price 
used  to  say,  the  white  man  saw  in  the  negro's  mind  only  what 
was  apparent  in  his  face,  "  darkness  there,  and  nothing  more." 
His  usefulness  in  the  world  is  still  measured  by  physical  faculties 
rather  than  by  qualities  of  mind  and  soul.  The  merciless  propo- 
sition of  Carlyle,  that  the  negro  is  useful  to  God's  creation  only 
as  a  servant,  still  finds  wide  acceptance.  It  is  so  natural  to  base 
a  theory  upon  a  long-established  practice  that  one  no  longer 
wonders  at  the  prevalence  of  this  belief.  The  negro  has  sus- 
tained servile  relation  to  the  Caucasian  for  so  long  a  time  that 
it  is  as  easy  as  it  is  agreeable  to  Caucasian  pride  to  conclude 
that  servitude  is  his  ordained  place  in  society.  When  it  was 
first  proposed  to  furnish  means  for  the  higher  development  of 
this  race,  some,  who  assumed  the  wisdom  of  their  day  and 
generation,  entertained  the  proposition  with  a  sneer ;  others  with 
a  smile. 

As  the  higher  susceptibilities  of  the  negro  were  not  wanted, 
their  existence  was  at  one  time  denied.  The  eternal  inferiority 
of  the  race  was  assumed  as  a  part  of  the  cosmic  order  of  things. 
History,  literature,  science,  speculative  conjecture,  and  even  Holy 
Writ  were  ransacked  for  evidence  and  argument  to  support  the 
ruling  dogma.  While  the  slaveholder  had  proved  beyond  all  pos- 
sibility of  doubt  the  incapacity  of  the  negro  for  knowledge,  yet 
he,  prudently  enough,  passed  laws  forbidding  the  attempt. 

The  African  was  snatched  from  the  wilds  of  savagery  and 
thrust  into  the  midst  of  a  mighty  civilization.  He  thus  escaped 

1  By  Kelly  Miller.  Adapted  from  Race  Adjustment,  2d  edition,  pp.  259-275. 
The  Neale  Publishing  Company,  New  York,  1909. 


7/8  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  gradual  progress  of  evolution.  Education  must  accomplish 
more  for  a  backward  race  than  for  a  people  who  are  in  the 
forefront  of  progress.  It  must  not  only  lead  to  the  unfoldment 
of  faculties  but  also  equip  for  a  life  from  which  the  recipient  is 
separated  by  many  centuries  of  development. 

It  required  the  human  race  thousands  of  years  to  bridge  the 
chasm  between  savagery  and  civilization,  which  must  now  be 
crossed  by  a  school  curriculum  of  a  few  years'  duration.  In  a 
settled  state  of  society  the  chief  function  of  education  is  to  enable 
the  individual  to  live  the  life  already  attained  by  his  race,  but  the 
educated  negro  must  be  a  pioneer,  a  progressive  force  in  the  up- 
lifting of  his  race,  and  that,  too,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  he 
belongs  to  a  backward  breed  that  has  never  taken  the  initiative 
in  the  progressive  movements  of  the  world. 

The  first  great  need  of  the  negro  is  that  the  choice  youth  of 
the  race  should  assimilate  the  principles  of  culture  and  hand 
them  down  to  the  masses  below.  This  is  the  only  gateway 
through  which  a  new  people  may  enter  into  modern  civilization. 
Herein  lies  the  history  of  culture.  The  select  minds,  of  the 
backward  race  or  nation  must  receive  the  new  cult  and  adapt  it 
to  the  peculiar  needs  of  their  own  people.  Japan  looms  up  as 
the  most  progressive  of  the  non-Aryan  races.  The  wonderful 
progress  of  these  Oriental  Yankees  is  due  in  a  large  measure  to 
their  wise  plan  of  procedure.  They  send  their  picked  youth  to 
the  great  centers  of  western  knowledge  ;  but  before  this  culture 
is  applied  to  their  own  needs  it  must  first  be  sifted  through  the 
sieve  of  their  native  comprehension.  The  graduates  of  the 
schools  and  colleges  for  the  negro  races  are  forming  centers 
of  civilizing  influence  in  all  parts  of  the  land,  and  we  confi- 
dently believe  that  these  grains  of  leaven  will  ultimately  leaven 
the  whole  lump. 

The  work  of  the  educated  colored  man  is  largely  that  of 
leadership.  lie  requires,  therefore,  all  the  discipline,  judgment 
and  mental  equipment  that  long  preparation  can  afford.  The 
more  ignorant  and  backward  the  masses  the  more  skilled  and 
sagacious  should  the  leaders  be.  If  a  beneficial  and  kindly  con- 
tact between  the  races  is  denied  on  the  lower  plane  of  flesh  and 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  NEGRO  779 

blood,  it  must  be  sought  in  the  upper  region  of  mental  and 
moral  kinship.  Knowledge  and  virtue  know  no  ethnic  exclusive- 
ness.  If  indeed  races  are  irreconcilable,  their  best  individual  ex- 
ponents are  not.  All  dignified  negotiation  must  be  conducted  on 
the  high  plane  of  individual  equality. 

For  East  is  East,  and  West  is  West,  and  never  the  twain  shall  meet, 
Till  earth  and  sky  stand  presently  at  God's  great  judgment  seat ; 
But  there  is  neither  East  nor  West,  border  nor  breed  nor  birth, 
When  two  strong  men  stand  face  to  face,  though  they  come  from  the  ends  of 
the  earth. 

Irreconcilables  become  reconciled  only  after  each  has  mani- 
fested the  best  possibilities  of  a  common  nature.  The  higher 
education  tends  to  develop  superior  individuals  who  may  be  ex- 
pected to  exercise  controlling  influence  over  the  multitude.  The 
individual  is  the  proof,  the  promise  and  the  salvation  of  the  race. 
The  undeveloped  races  which,  in  modern  times,  have  faded  be- 
fore the  breath  of  civilization  have  probably  perished  because  of 
their  failure  to  produce  commanding  leaders  to  guide  them  wisely 
under  the  stress  and  strain  which  -an  encroaching  civilization 
imposed.  A  single  red  Indian  with  the  capacity  and  spirit  of 
Booker  T.  Washington  might  have  solved  the  red  man's  prob- 
lems and  averted  his  pending  doom. 

Again,  the  higher  education  should  be  encouraged  because  of 
the  moral  impotency  of  all  the  moods  of  education  which  do  not 
touch  and  stir  the  human  spirit.  It  is  folly  to  suppose  that  the 
moral  nature  of  the  child  is  improved  because  it  has  been  taught 
to  read  and  write  and  cast  up  accounts,  or  to  practice  a  handi- 
craft. The  ability  to  saw  a  line  or  hit  a  nail  aplomb  with  a 
hammer  does  not  create  a  zeal  for  righteousness  and  truth.  It  is 
only  when  the  pupil  comes  to  feel  the  vitalizing  power  of  knowl- 
edge that  it  begins  to  react  upon  the  life  and  to  fructify  in 
character.  This  is  especially  true  of  a  backward  race  whose 
acquisitive  power  outruns  its  apperceptive  faculty. 

The  negro  has  now  reached  a  critical  stage  in  his  career. 
The  point  of  attachment  between  the  races  which  slavery  made 
possible  has  been  destroyed.  The  relation  is  daily  becoming  less 
intimate  and  friendly,  and  more  businesslike  and  formal.  It  thus 


780  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

becomes  all  the  more  imperative  that  the  race  should  gain  for 
itself  the  primary  principles  of  knowledge  and  culture. 

The  social  separation  of  the  races  in  America  renders  it  im- 
perative that  the  professional  classes  among  the  negroes  should 
be  recruited  from  their  own  ranks.  Under  ordinary  circum- 
stances, professional  places  are  filled  by  the  most  favored  class 
in  the  community.  In  a  Latin  or  Catholic  country,  where  the 
fiction  of  "  social  equality  "  does  not  exist,  there  is  felt  no  ne- 
cessity for  negro  priest,  teacher,  or  physician  to  administer  to 
his  own  race.  But  in  America  this  is  conceded  to  be  a  social 
necessity.  Such  being  the  case,  the  negro  leader,  to  use  a  fa- 
miliar term,  requires  all  the  professional  equipment  of  his  white 
confrere,  and  special  knowledge  of  the  needs  and  circumstances 
of  his  race  in  addition.  The  teacher  of  the  negro  child,  the 
preacher  to  a  negro  congregation,  or  the  physician  to  negro 
patients  certainly  requires  as  much  professional  skill  as  those 
who  administer  to  the  corresponding  needs  of  the  white  race. 
Nor  are  the  requirements  of  the  situation  one  whit  diminished 
because  the  bestower  is  of  the  same  race  as  the  recipient.  The 
negro  has  the  same  professional  needs  as  his  white  confrere  and 
can  be  qualified  for  his  function  only  by  courses  of  training  of 
like  extent  and  thoroughness.  By  no  other  means  can  he  be 
qualified  to  enlighten  the  ignorant,  restrain  the  vicious,  care  for 
the  sick  and  afflicted ;  administer  solace  to  weary  souls,  or  plead 
in  litigation  the  cause  of  the  injured. 

According  to  the  census  of  1900  there  were  72  cities  in  the 
United  States  with  a  population  of  more  than  5000  persons  of 
color,  averaging  15,000  each,  and  aggregating  1,000,000  in  all. 
The  professional  needs  of  this  urban  population  for  teachers, 
preachers,  lawyers,  and  physicians  call  for  5000  well-equipped 
men  and  women,  not  one  of  whom  would  be  qualified  for  his 
function  merely  by  the  three  R's  or  a  handicraft. 

The  supreme  concern  of  philanthropy  is  the  welfare  of  the 
unawakened  rural  masses.  To  this  end  there  is  need  of  a  goodly 
sprinkling  of  well-educated  men  and  women  to  give  wise  guid- 
ance, direction  and  control.  Let  no  one  deceive  himself  that  the 
country  negro  can  be  uplifted  except  through  the  influence  of 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  NEGRO  781 

higher  contact.  It  is  impossible  to  inaugurate  and  conduct  a 
manual  training  or  industrial  school  without  men  of  sound  aca- 
demic as  well  as  technical  knowledge.  The  torch  which  is  to 
lighten  the  darksome  places  of  the  South  must  be  kindled  at 
the  centers  of  light. 

Whenever  the  higher  education  of  the  negro  is  broached,  in- 
dustrial training  is  always  suggested  as  a  counterirritant.  Parti- 
sans of  rival  claims  align  themselves  in  hostile  array  and  will  not 
so  much  as  respect  a  flag  of  truce.  These  one-eyed  enthusiasts 
lack  binocular  vision.  We  had  as  well  attempt  to  decide  whether 
the  base  or  altitude  is  the  more  important  element  of  a  triangle. 
The  two  forms  of  training  should  be  considered  on  the  basis  of 
their  relative,  not  rival,  claims. 

Indeed,  one  of  the  strongest  claims  for  the  higher  education 
of  the  negro  is  that  it  will  stimulate  the  dormant  industrial 
activities  of  the  race.  The  surest  way  to  incite  a  people  to  meet 
the  material  demands  of  life  is  to  teach  them  that  life  is  more 
than  meat.  The  unimaginative  laborer  pursues  the  routine  rounds 
of  his  task,  spurred  on  only  by  the  immediate  necessities  of  life 
and  the  taskmaster's  stern  command.  To  him,  it  is  only  time 
and  the  hour  that  run  through  the  whole  day.  The  negro  lacks 
enlightened  imagination.  He  needs  prospect  and  vista.  He  does 
not  make  provision  because  he  lacks  prevision.  Under  slavery  he 
toiled  as  the  ass,  dependent  upon  the  daily  allowance  from  his 
master's  crib.  To  him  the  prayer,  Give  us  this  day  our  daily 
bread,  has  a  material  rather  than  a  spiritual  meaning.  If  you 
would  perpetuate  the  industrial  incapacity  of  the  negro,  then 
confine  him  to  the  low  grounds  of  drudgery  and  toil  and  pre- 
vent him  from  casting  his  eyes  unto  the  hills  whence  come 
inspiration  and  promise.  The  man  with  the  hoe  is  of  all  men 
most  miserable  unless,  forsooth,  he  has  a  hope.  But  if  imbued 
with  hope  and  sustained  by  an  ideal,  he  can  consecrate  the  hoe  as 
well  as  any  other  instrument  of  service,  as  a  means  of  fulfilling 
the  promise  within  him.  It  requires  range  of  vision  to  stimulate 
the  industrial  activities  of  the  people.  The  most  effective  prayer 
that  can  be  uttered  for  the  negro  is,  "Lord,  open  Thou  his  eyes." 
He  cannot  see  beyond  the  momentary  gratification  of  appetite 


782  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

and  passion.  He  does  not  look  before  and  after.  Such  stimu- 
lating influence  can  be  brought  to  bear  upon  the  race  only 
through  the  inspiration  of  the  higher  culture. 

It  requires  men  of  sound  knowledge  to  conceive  and  execute 
plans  for  the  industrial  education  of  the  masses.  The  great  apos- 
tles of  industrial  education  for  the  negro  have  been  of  academic 
training,  or  of  its  cultural  equivalent.  The  work  of  Hampton 
and  Tuskegee  is  carried  on  by  men  and  women  of  a  high  de- 
gree of  mental  cultivation. 

Slavery  taught  the  negro  to  work,  but  at  the  same  time  to 
despise  those  who  worked.  To  them  all  show  of  respectability 
was  attached  to  those  whom  circumstances  placed  above  the  ne- 
cessity of  toil.  It  requires  intellectual  conception  of  the  object 
and  the  end  of  labor  to  overcome  this  mischievous  notion.  The 
negro  mechanics  produced  under  the  old  slave  regime  are  rapidly 
passing  away  because  they  did  not  possess  the  power  of  self- 
perpetuation.  They  were  not  rooted  and  grounded  in  rational 
principles  of  the  mechanical  arts.  The  hand  could  not  transmit 
its  cunning  because  the  mind  was  not  trained.  They  were  given 
the  knack  without  the  knowledge. 

The  charge  has  recently  been  made  that  money  spent  on  the 
higher  education  of  the  negro  has  been  wasted.  Does  this  charge 
come  from  the  South  ?  When  we  consider  that  it  was  through 
Northern  philanthropy  that  a  third  of  its  population  received 
their  first  impulse  toward  better  things ;  that  these  higher  insti- 
tutions prepared  the  30,000  negro  teachers  whose  services  are 
utilized  in  the  public  schools ;  that  the  men  and  women  who 
were  the  beneficiaries  of  this  philanthropy  are  doing  all  in  their 
power  to  control,  guide  and  restrain  the  South 's  ignorant  and 
vicious  masses,  thus  lightening  the  public  burden  and  lifting  the 
general  life  to  a  higher  level ;  that  these  persons  are  almost  with- 
out exception  earnest  advocates  of  peace,  harmony,  and  good  will 
between  the  races  ;  to  say  nothing  of  the  fact  that  these  vast 
philanthropic  contributions  have  passed  through  the  trade  chan- 
nels of  Southern  merchants,  it  would  seem  that  the  charge  is 
strangely  incompatible  with  that  high-minded  disposition  and  chiv- 
alrous spirit  which  the  South  is  so  zealous  to  maintain.  Does  this 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  NEGRO  783 

charge  come  from  the  North  ?  It  might  not  be  impertinent  to 
propound  a  few  propositions  for  their  consideration.  Is  it  possi- 
ble to  specify  a  like  sum  of  money  spent  upon  any  other  back- 
ward race  that  has  produced  greater  results  than  the  amount 
spent  upon  the  Southern  negro  ?  Is  it  the  American  Indian, 
upon  whom  four  centuries  of  missionary  effort  has  produced  no 
more  progress  than  is  made  by  a  painted  ship  upon  a  painted 
sea  ?  Is  it  the  Hawaiian,  who  will  soon  be  civilized  off  the  face 
of  the  earth  ?  It  is  incumbent  upon  him  who  claims  that  this 
money  has  been  wasted  to  point  out  where,  in  all  the  range  of 
benevolent  activity,  the  contributions  of  philanthropy  have  been 
more  profitably  spent. 

It  is  true  that  forty  or  fifty  millions  of  dollars  have  been  thus 
spent,  but  when  we  consider  the  magnitude  of  the  task  to  which 
it  was  applied,  we  find  that  it  would  not  average  one  dollar  a  year 
for  each  negro  child  to  be  educated.  Why  should  we  marvel, 
then,  that  the  entire  mass  of  ignorance  and  corruption  has  not 
put  on  enlightenment  and  purity  ? 

It  is  sometimes  claimed  that  the  few  capable  negroes  can  find 
opportunity  for  higher  training  in  the  institutions  of  the  North. 
It  is  by  no  means  certain  as  to  what  extent  these  institutions 
would  admit  colored  students.  The  Northern  college  is  not  apt 
to  inspire  the  colored  pupil  with  the  enthusiasm  and  fixed  pur- 
pose for  the  work  which  Providence  has  assigned  him.  It  is  the 
spirit,  not  the  letter  that  maketh  alive.  The  white  college  does 
not  contemplate  the  special  needs  of  the  negro  race.  American 
ideals  could  not  be  fostered  in  the  white  youth  of  our  land  by 
sending  them  to  Oxford  or  Berlin  for  tuition.  No  more  can  the 
negro  gain  racial  inspiration  from  Harvard  or  Yale.  And  yet 
they  need  the  benefit  of  contact  and  comparison,  and  the  zeal 
for  knowledge  and  truth  which  these  great  institutions  impart. 
The  negro  college  and  the  Northern  institution  will  serve  to 
preserve  a  balance  between  undue  elation  for  want  of  sober 
comparison,  and  barren  culture,  for  lack  of  inspirational  contact 
with  the  masses. 

It  is  often  charged  that  the  higher  education  lifts  the  negro 
above  the  needs  of  his  race.  The  thousands  of  graduates  of 


784  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

negro  schools  and  colleges  all  over  the  land  are  a  living  refutation 
of  this  charge.  After  the  mind  has  been  stored  with  knowledge 
it  is  transmitted  to  the  place  where  the  need  is  greatest  and  the 
call  is  loudest,  and  transmuted  into  whatever  mode  of  energy 
may  be  necessary  to  accomplish  the  imposed  task. 

The  issues  involved  in  the  race  question  are  as  intricate  in 
their  relations  and  far-reaching  in  their  consequences  as  any  that 
have  ever  faced  human  wisdom  for  solution.  No  one  can  be  too 
learned  or  too  profound  in  whose  hands  are  intrusted  the  tempo- 
ral and  eternal  destiny  of  a  human  soul.  Even  if  the  educated 
negro  desired  to  flee  from  his  race,  he  soon  learns  by  bitter  ex- 
perience that  he  will  be  thrown  back  upon  himself  by  the  expul- 
sive power  of  prejudice.  He  soon  learns  that  the  Newtonian 
formula  has  a  social  application  :  "  The  force  of  attraction  varies 
directly  as  the  mass." 

77.    THE  PROBLEM  FROM  AN  ETHNOLOGIST'S   POINT 
OF  VIEW1 

When  we  turn  our  attention  to  the  negro  problem  as  it  presents 
itself  in  the  United  States,  we  must  remember  our  previous  con- 
siderations, in  which  we  found  that  no  proof  of  an  inferiority  of 
the  negro  type  could  be  given,  except  that  it  seemed  possible 
that  perhaps  the  race  would  not  produce  quite  so  many  men  of 
highest  genius  as  other  races,  while  there  was  nothing  at  all  that 
could  be  interpreted  as  suggesting  any  material  difference  in  the 
mental  capacity  of  the  bulk  of  the  negro  population  as  compared 
to  the  bulk  of  the  white  population. 

Much  has  been  said  about  the  shorter  period  of  growth  of  the 
negro  child  as  compared  to  the  white  child,  but  no  convincing 
data  have  been  forthcoming.  Considering  the  great  variation  in 
the  duration  of  growth  and  development  in  different  individuals 
and  in  various  social  classes,  according  to  the  more  or  less  favor- 
able nutrition  of  the  child,  the  information  that  we  possess  in  re- 
gard to  the  negro  child  is  practically  without  value.  We  have  not 

1  By  Franz  Boas.  From  The  Mind  of  Primitive  Man,  pp.  268-278.  The  Mac- 
millan  Company,  1911. 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  NEGRO  785 

even  evidence  that  would  prove  that  a  shorter  period  of  develop- 
ment must  be  unfavorable  in  its  results.  Neither  do  we  know  at 
what  period  and  in  what  manner  develop  the  typical  negroid  fea- 
tures, which  are  much  less  pronounced  in  the  newborn  than 
in  adults. 

It  is  surprising,  that,  notwithstanding  their  importance,  no  at- 
tempts have  been  made  to  gain  a  better  insight  into  these  ana- 
tomical and  physiological  problems,  some  of  which  might  be  solved 
without  much  difficulty.  As  it  is,  almost  all  we  can  say  with  cer- 
tainty is,  that  the  differences  between  the  average  types  of  the  white 
and  of  the  negro  that  have  a  bearing  upon  vitality  and  mental 
ability  are  much  less  than  the  individual  variations  in  each  race. 

This  result  is,  however,  of  great  importance,  and  is  quite  in 
accord  with  the  result  of  ethnological  observation.  A  survey  of 
African  tribes  exhibits  to  our  view  cultural  achievements  of  no 
mean  order.  To  those  unfamiliar  with  the  products  of  native 
African  art  and  industry,  a  walk  through  one  of  the  large  museums 
of  Europe  would  be  a  revelation.  None  of  our  American  museums 
has  made  collections  that  exhibit  this  subject  in  any  way  worthily. 
The  blacksmith,  the  wood-carver,  the  weaver,  the  potter,  —  these 
all  produce  ware  original  in  form,  executed  with  great  care,  and 
exhibiting  that  love  of  labor,  and  interest  in  the  results  of  work, 
which  are  apparently  so  often  lacking  among  the  negroes  in  our 
American  surroundings.  No  less  instructive  are  the  records  of 
travelers,  reporting  the  thrift  of  the  native  villages,  of  the  ex- 
tended trade  of  the  country,  and  of  its  markets.  The  power  of 
organization  as  illustrated  in  the  government  of  native  states  is 
of  no  mean  order,  and  when  wielded  by  men  of  great  personality 
has  led  to  the  foundation  of  extended  empires.  All  the  different 
kinds  of  activities  that  we  consider  valuable  in  the  citizens  of  our 
country  may  be  found  in  aboriginal  Africa.  Neither  is  the  wisdom 
of  the  philosopher  absent.  A  perusal  of  any  of  the  collections 
of  African  proverbs  that  have  been  published  will  demonstrate 
the  homely  practical  philosophy  of  the  negro,  which  is  often  proof 
of  sound  feeling  and  judgment. 

It  would  be  out  of  place  to  enlarge  on  this  subject,  because  the 
essential  point  that  anthropology  can  contribute  to  the  practical 


786  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

discussion  of  the  adaptability  of  the  negro  is  a  decision  of  the 
question  how  far  the  undesirable  traits  that  are  at  present  un- 
doubtedly found  in  our  negro  population  are  due  to  racial  traits, 
and  how  far  they  are  due  to  social  surroundings  for  which  we 
are  responsible.  To  this  question  anthropology  can  give  the  de- 
cided answer  that  the  traits  of  African  culture  as  observed  in  the 
aboriginal  home  of  the  negro  are  those  of  a  healthy  primitive 
people,  with  a  considerable  degree  of  personal  initiative,  with  a 
talent  for  organization,  and  with  imaginative  power,  with  technical 
skill  and  thrift.  Neither  is  a  warlike  spirit  absent  in  the  race,  as  is 
proved  by  the  mighty  conquerors  who  overthrew  states  and  founded 
new  empires,  and  by  the  courage  of  the  armies  that  follow  the 
bidding  of  their  leaders.  There  is  nothing  to  prove  that  licentious- 
ness, shiftless  laziness,  lack  of  initiative,  are  fundamental  charac- 
teristics of  the  race.  Everything  points  out  that  these  qualities 
are  the  result  of  social  conditions  rather  than  of  hereditary  traits. 

It  may  be  well  to  state  here  once  more  with  some  emphasis 
that  it  would  be  erroneous  to  assume  that  there  are  no  differences 
in  the  mental  make-up  of  the  negro  race  and  of  other  races,  and 
that  their  activities  should  run  in  the  same  lines.  On  the  con- 
trary, if  there  is  any  meaning  in  correlation  of  anatomical  struc- 
ture and  physiological  function,  we  must  expect  that  differences 
exist.  There  is,  however,  no  evidence  whatever  that  would  stig- 
matize the  negro  as  of  weaker  build,  or  as  subject  to  inclinations 
and  powers  that  are  opposed  to  our  social  organization.  An  un- 
biased estimate  of  the  anthropological  evidence  so  far  brought 
forward  does  not  permit  us  to  countenance  the  belief  in  a  racial 
inferiority  which  would  unfit  an  individual  of  the  negro  race  to 
take  his  part  in  modern  civilization.  We  do  not  know  of  any 
demand  made  on  the  human  body  or  mind  in  modern  life  that 
anatomical  or  ethnological  evidence  would  prove  to  be  beyond  the 
'powers  of  the  negro. 

The  traits  of  the  American  negro  are  adequately  explained  on 
the  basis  of  his  history  and  social  status.  The  tearing  away  from 
the  African  soil  and  the  consequent  complete  loss  of  the  old  stand- 
ards of  life,  which  were  replaced  by  the  dependency  of  slavery 
and  by  all  it  entailed,  followed  by  a  period  of  disorganization  and 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  NEGRO       787 

by  a  severe  economic  struggle  against  heavy  odds,  are  sufficient 
to  explain  the  inferiority  of  the  status  of  the  race,  without  falling 
back  upon  the  theory  of  hereditary  inferiority. 

In  short,  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  the  negro,  when, 
given  facility  and  opportunity,  will  be  perfectly  able  to  fulfill  the)  I 
duties  of  citizenship  as  well  as  his  white  neighbor.     It  may  be 
that  he  will  not  produce  as  many  great  men  as  the  white  race, 
and  that  his  average  achievement  will  not  quite  reach  the  level 
of  the  average  achievement  of  the  white  race ;  but  there  will  be 
endless  numbers  who  will  be  able  to  outrun  their  white  competi- 
tors, and  who  will  do  better  than  the  defectives  whom  we  permit 
to  drag  down  and  to  retard  the  healthy  children  of  our  public 
schools. 

The  anthropological  discussion  of  the  negro  problem  requires 
also  a  word  on  the  "  race  instinct "  of  the  whites,  which  plays  a 
most  important  part  in  the  practical  aspect  of  the  problem.  Ulti- 
mately this  phenomenon  is  a  repetition  of  the  old  instinct  and 
fear  of  the  connubium  of  patricians  and  plebeians,  of  the  Eu- 
ropean nobility  and  the  common  people,  or  of  the  castes  of  India. 
The  emotions  and  reasonings  concerned  are  the  same  in  every 
respect.  In  our  case  they  relate  particularly  to  the  necessity  of 
maintaining  a  distinct  social  status  in  order  to  avoid  race-mixture. 
As  in  other  cases  mentioned,  the  so-called  instinct  is  not  a  physi- 
ological dislike.  This  is  proved  by  the  existence  of  our  large 
mulatto  population,  as  well  as  by  the  more  ready  amalgamation 
of  the  Latin  peoples.  It  is  rather  an  expression  of  social  condi- 
tions that  are  so  deeply  ingrained  in  us  that  they  assume  a  strong 
emotional  value ;  and  this,  I  presume,  is  meant  when  we  call  such 
feelings  instinctive.  The  feeling  certainly  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  question  of  the  vitality  and  ability  of  the  mulatto. 

Still  the  questions  of  race-mixture  and  of  the  negro's  adaptabil- 
ity to  our  environment  represent  a  number  of  important  problems. 

I  think  we  have  reason  to  be  ashamed  to  confess  that  the  sci- 
entific study  of  these  questions  has  never  received  the  support 
either  of  our  government  or  of  any  of  our  great  scientific  insti- 
tutions ;  and  it  is  hard  to  understand  why  we  are  so  indiffer- 
ent toward  a  question  which  is  of  paramount  importance  to  the 


/88  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

welfare  of  our  nation.  The  anatomy  of  the  American  negro  is 
not  well  known ;  and,  notwithstanding  the  oft-repeated  assertions 
regarding  the  hereditary  inferiority  of  the  mulatto,  we  know  hardly 
anything  on  this  subject.  If  his  vitality  is  lower  than  that  of  the 
full-blooded  negro,  this  may  be  as  much  due  to  social  causes  as  to 
hereditary  causes.  Owing  to  the  very  large  number  of  mulattoes 
in  our  country,  it  would  not  be  a  difficult  matter  to  investigate 
the  biological  aspects  of  this  question  thoroughly.  The  impor- 
tance of  researches  on  this  subject  cannot  be  too  strongly  urged, 
since  the  desirability  or  undesirability  of  race-mixture  should  be 
known.  Looking  into  a  distant  future,  it  seems  reasonably  cer- 
tain that  with  the  increasing  mobility  of  the  negro,  the  number 
of  full-bloods  will  rapidly  decrease ;  and  since  there  is  no^intro- 
duction  of  new  negro  blood,  there  cannot  be  the  slightest  doubt 
'that  the  ultimate  effect  of  the  contact  between  the  two  races  must 
necessarily  be  a  continued  increase  of  the  amount  of  white  blood 
in  the  negro  community. 

This  process  will  go  on  most  rapidly  inside  of  the  colored  com- 
munity, owing  to  intermarriages  between  mulattoes  and  full- 
blooded  negroes.  Whether  or  not  the  addition  of  white  blood  to 
the  colored  population  is  sufficiently  large  to  counterbalance  this 
levelling  effect,  which  will  make  the  mixed  bloods  with  a  slight 
strain  of  negro  blood  darker,  is  difficult  to  tell ;  but  it  is  quite 
obvious  that,  although  our  laws  may  retard  the  influx  of  white 
blood  considerably,  they  cannot  hinder  the  gradual  progress  of 
intermixture.  If  the  powerful  caste  system  of  India  has  not  been 
able  to  prevent  intermixture,  our  laws,  which  recognize  a  greater 
amount  of  individual  liberty,  will  certainly  not  be  able  to  do  so ; 
and  that  there  is  no  racial  sexual  antipathy  is  made  sufficiently 
clear  by  the  size  of  our  mulatto  population.  A  candid  considera- 
tion of  the  manner  in  which  intermixture  takes  place  shows  very 
clearly  that  the  probability  of  the  infusion  of  white  blood  into  the 
colored  population  is  considerable.  While  the  large  body  of  the 
white  population  will  always,  at  least  for  a  very  long  time  to 
come,  be  entirely  remote  from  any  possibility  of  intermixture 
with  negroes,  I  think  that  we  may  predict  with  a  fair  degree  of 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  NEGRO  789 

certainty  a  condition  in  which  the  contrast  between  colored  people 
and  whites  will  be  less  marked  than  it  is  at  the  present  time. 
Notwithstanding  all  the  obstacles  that  may  be  laid  in  the  way  of 
intermixture,  the  conditions  are  such  that  the  persistence  of  the 
pure  negro  type  is  practically  impossible.  Not  even  an  exces- 
sively high  mortality  and  lack  of  fertility  among  the  mixed  type, 
as  compared  with  the  pure  types,  could  prevent  this  result.  Since 
it  is  impossible  to  change  these  conditions,  they  should  be  faced 
squarely,  and  we  ought  to  demand  a  careful  and  critical  investi- 
gation of  the  whole  problem. 

It  seems  to  my  mind  that  the  policy  of  many  of  our  Southern , 
States  that  try  to  prevent  all  racial  intermixture  is  based  on  an 
erroneous  view  of  the  process  involved.  The  alleged  reason  for 
this  type  of  legislation  is  the  necessity  of  protecting  the  white 
race  against  the  infusion  of  negro  blood.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
this  danger  does  not  exist.  With  very  few  exceptions,  the  unions 
between  whites  and  negroes  are  those  of  white  men  and  negro 
women.  The  increase  of  races,  however,  is  such  that  the  number 
of  children  born  does  not  depend  upon  the  number  of  men,  but 
upon  the  number  of  women.  Given,  therefore,  a  certain  number 
of  negro  women,  the  increase  of  the  colored  population  will  de- 
pend upon  their  number ;  and  if  a  considerable  number  of  their 
children  are  those  of  white  fathers,  the  race  as  a  whole  must  nec- 
essarily lose  its  pure  negro  type.  At  the  same  time  no  such  in- 
fusion of  negro  blood  into  the  white  race  through  the  maternal 
line  occurs,  so  that  the  process  is  actually  one  of  lightening  the 
negro  race  without  corresponding  admixture  in  the  white  race. 

It  appears  from  this  consideration  that  the  most  important 
practical  questions  relating  to  the  negro  problem  have  reference 
to  the  mulattoes  and  other  mixed  bloods,  —  to  their  physical 
types,  their  mental  and  moral  qualities,  and  their  vitality.  When 
the  bulky  literature  of  this  subject  is  carefully  sifted,  little  remains 
that  will  endure  serious  criticism ;  and  I  do  not  believe  that  I 
claim  too  much  when  I  say  that  the  whole  work  on  this  subject 
remains  to  be  done.  The  development  of  modern  methods  of 
research  makes  it  certain  that  by  careful  inquiry  definite  answers 


790  READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

to  our  problems  may  be  found.  Is  it  not,  then,  our  plain  duty  to 
iiinform  ourselves,  that,  so  far  as  that  can  be  done,  deliberate  con- 
sideration of  observations  may  take  the  place  of  heated  discussion 
lof  beliefs  in  matters  that  concern  not  only  ourselves,  but  also 
the  welfare  of  millions  of  negroes  ? 

REFERENCES 

BAKER,  R.  S.,  Following  the  Color  Line,  1908. 

BOAS,  F.,  The  Mind  of  Primitive  Man  1911. 

BRYCE,  JAMES,  The  American  Commonwealth,  edition  of  1910,  chaps,  xciii-xcv. 

CUTLER,  J.  E.,  Lynch  Law,  1905. 

DANIELS,  JOHN,  In  Freedom's  Birthplace,  1914.  (A  study  of  the  negroes  of 

Boston.) 

DuBois,  VV.  E.  B.,  Souls  of  Black  Folk,  1903. 
HART,  A.  B.,  The  Southern  South,  1910. 
MILLER,  KELLY,  Race  Adjustment,  1909. 
MURPHY,  E.  G.,  The  Present  South,  1904. 
MURPHY,  E.  G.,  The  Basis  of  Ascendancy,  1910. 
ODUM,  H.  W.,  Social  and  Mental  Traits  of  the  Negro.    Columbia  University 

Studies  in  History,  Economics,  and  Public  Law,  Vol.  XXXVII,  No.  3. 
OVINGTOX,  M.  W.,  Half  a  Man,  the  Status  of  the  Negro  in  New  York  City, 

191 1. 

PICKETT,  W.  P.,  The  Negro  Problem:  Abraham  Lincoln's  Solution,  1909. 
RHODES,  J.  F.,  History  of  the  United  States  from  the  Compromise  of  1850, 

Vols.  V,  VI,  and  VII.   See  especially  chap,  xlii,  in  Vol.  VII,  for  a  picture  of 

conditions  under  the  Reconstruction  regime. 

SMITH,  W.  B.,  The  Color  Line,  a  Brief  in  Behalf  of  the  Unborn,  1905. 
STEPHENSON,  G.  T.,  Race  Distinctions  in  American  Law,  1910. 
STONE,  A.  H.,  Studies  in  the  American  Race  Problem,  1 908. 
WASHINGTON,  B.  T.,  The  Future  of  the  American  Negro,  1 899. 
WASHINGTON,  B.  T.,  Up  From  Slavery,  1901. 
WEATHERFORD,  W.  D.,  Present  Forces  in  Negro    Progress,  1912. 
Atlanta  University,  Monographs  on  various  aspects  of  the  negro  problem, 

1896-. 


INDEX 


Abbott,  Lyman,  424,  475 

Ability,  difficulty  of  measuring,  167, 1 68 

Accidents,  industrial,  310,  311 

Accumulation,  desire  for,  98,  99 

Addams,  Jane,  344,  501 

Adolescence,  dangerous  point  in  girl's 
life,  541-545 

Adultery,  ground  for  divorce,  581,  582, 
583,  596,  599,  600 

Africa,  birth  rate,  197,  198;  infant  mor- 
tality, 197,  198;  negro  culture,  785, 
786;  population,  197 

Agricultural  Commission,  Italian,  251 

Agricultural  improvements,  relation  to 
population  increase,  225 

Alcoholism,  158,  190,  192,  193,  243 

Alexander,  Harriet,  237 

Aliens,  departing,  250,  396,  397,  402; 
deportation  of,  379,  383 ;  excluded 
classes  of,  373;  governmental  respon- 
sibility for,  391,  392  ;  importation  of, 
for  immoral  purposes,  372;  suggested 
bases  of  exclusion,  390 

Alien  registration  and  education,  bu- 
reau of,  suggested,  414 

Alien  seamen,  383 

Almshouses,  feeble-minded  in,  186,  191 

Amalgamated  Association  of  Mining 
Employees,  301 

Amalgamation,  330,  332,  333,  334,  336, 
35°'  356»  368.  4i6,  417,  787-79° 

America,  birth  rate,  197,  198;  infant 
mortality,  187,  198;  population,  197; 
population  increase,  22,  23,  24,  35,  36 

American  Bar  Association,  657 

American  Breeders'  Association.  See 
American  Genetic  Association 

American  Federation  of  Labor,  attitude 
toward  negroes,  747 

American  Genetic  Association,  156 

American  Jewish  Committee,  364 

American  Prison  Association,  155 

American  Public  Health  Association, 
216 

American    Statistical  Association,  200 

Americanism,  349 

Americanization,  347,  353,  365,  404 


Anarchism,  123 

Anarchists  excluded,  374,  381 

Ancestral  heredity,  Galtonian  law  of, 

149 

Ancient  Order  of  Hibernians,  363 
Andrews,  John  A.,  668,  669 
Androgyny,  523 
Angioneurotic  cedema,  151 
Anglo-Saxon    stock,    part    played    in 

American  life,  344,  345,  347,  348,  349, 

352.  359 
Annual  income  of  immigrant  families, 

3'5 

Anthony,  Susan  B.,  440 

Anthropological  Institute,  145 

Antin,  Mary,  350 

Antislavery  agitation,  relation  to  the 
early  woman  movement,  447 

Aquinas,  Thomas,  593 

Argentina,  immigration  policy  of,  258 

Aristocracy,  165,  356;  of  ability,  164; 
not  self-perpetuating,  92 

Arithmetical  ratio  of  food  increase, 
24-26 

Armenians,  283;  wages,  315,  316 

Army  recruits,  large  percentage  re- 
jected, 144 

Arrested  development,  187;  of  women, 
529.  See  Feeble-mindedness 

Asceticism,  229 

Asia,  birth  rate,  197,  198 ;  infant  mor- 
tality, 197,  198;  population,  197 

Asiatic  exclusion  policy,  410-412 

Association  of  Jewish  Farmers,  365 

Astronomical  cycles  in  relation  to  pop- 
ulation growth,  115,  116 

Asylums,  eugenics  investigations  in, 
158 

Australian  Federation,  birth  rate,  197 ; 
infant  mortality,  197;  population,  197 

Austria,  birth  rate,  82,  83,  87,  204;  den- 
sity of  population,  223;  emigration, 
248,  249,  256;  infant  mortality,  205; 
natural  increase  of  population,  95 

Backward  children,  185.  See  Feeble- 
mindedness, Arrested  development 


791 


792 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


Bagehot,  Walter,  99 

Baker,  Ray  Stannard,  755 

Balch,  Emily  Greene,  330 

Balkan  States,  emigration  from,  248, 
249;  wages  in,  246 

Banks,  immigrant,  384 

Baron  de  Hirsch  Fund,  259 

Bavaria,  birth  rate,  83,  86,  87,  88;  nat- 
ural increase  of  population,  95 

Bebel,  August,  629 

Beggars  excluded,  373 

Belgians,  284,  294,  296,  297,  360 

Belgium,  birth  rate,  82,  83,  86,  204;  den- 
sity of  population,  223;  infant  mor- 
tality, 205;  natural  increase,  95 

Bell,  Alexander  Graham,  155 

Benefit  of  clergy,  women  denied,  451 

Berlin,  birth  rate,  82,  83,  86,  88,  89,  91 

Bertillon,  Jacques,  82,  88,  89 

Besant,  Annie,  defense  of  Neo-Malthu- 
sianism,  228-233,  237 

Biography  as  data  for  eugenics,  137 

Biologists,  contribution  to  eugenics, 
162,  166 

Biometric  Laboratory,  the,  150 

Biometric  method,  149,  153,  154 

Biometricians,  4,  153,  154 

Biometrika,  145,  148 

Birth  control,  131-134,  229-239,  635; 
objections  to,  230-232,  234-239.  See 
Neo-Malthusianism 

Birth  rate,  corrected,  80,  81;  crude,  80, 
81;  declining,  3,  80-117,  131,  226, 
234-236;  differential,  3,  87-90,  138, 
139,  146,  152,  226,  330;  influenced  by 
immigration,  321-328;  stimulated  by 
emigration,  388,  420 

Birth  registration,  backwardness  of,  in 
the  United  States,  4,  5,  195;  in  Phil- 
ippine Islands,  198 ;  relation  to  in- 
fant mortality,  195 

Blackstone,  William,  444,  447,  448,  590 

Blaxter,  H.  V.,  342 

Blindness,  158 

"  Boarding-boss"  system,  the,  276 

Boards  of  special  inquiry,  377,  380,  381  ; 
changes  in,  recommended,  384 

Boas,  Franz,  331,  404 

Bohemians,  293,  335,  337,  338,  346,  354, 
360,  361,  363;  wages,  315 

Booth,  Charles,  145,  496 

Bradlaugh,  Charles,  236 

Bran,  II .  A.,  586 

Bravas,  291  ;  wages,  315 

Brazil,  immigration  policy,  258 

Breast-fed  infants,  low  mortality  of,  216 


Brooks,  Phillips,  421 

Brooks,  W.  K.,  553 

Bruce,  Blanche  K.,  667 

Bryce,  James,  404 

Bucer,  Martin,  views  on  marriage  and 
divorce,  587,  594,  597 

Bulgaria,  birth  rate,  204;  infant  mortal- 
ity, 205;  natural  increase,  95 

Bulgarians,  283,  291 

Butler,  Elizabeth  B.,  544 

Cadets,  186 

Caird,  Mona,  602 

California,  Japanese  in,  411-418;  ori- 
ental policy,  411,  412  ;  progressivism 
in,  351  ;  sterilization  law  in,  162 

Calvin,  John,  views   on   divorce,   587, 

595.  598 

Cameralists,  2,  18 

Canada,  emigration  to,  258,  259 

Canon  law,  n,  423,  610,  613,  614,  619 

Canonists,  views  on  divorce,  595,  609, 
610,  61 1,  614 

Capital,  accumulation  of,  128,  130,  353 

Carey,  Henry,  on  population,  221 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  on  the  negro,  777 

Carnegie  Institution,  157 

Carpenter,  Edward,  232 

Carpetbaggers,  669,  674,  676 

Carver,  T.  N.,  138,  144 

Caste,  15,  164;  influence  on  birth  rate, 
129;  marriage  among  Swedish  nobil- 
ity, 171  ;  prevented  by  immigration, 
357  ;  selection,  171 

Catholic  Church,  doctrines  of  marriage 
and  divorce,  u,  586-592;  influence 
on  birth  rate,  86,  87 

Celibacy,  72,  138,  147,  160,  171,  229, 
231,  233;  among  the  best  women, 
536 ;  Pauline  doctrine  of,  582-584 ; 
selective  influence  of,  229 

Ceylon,  birth  rate,  204 ;  infant  mortal- 
ity, 205 

Charity,  186,  468 ;  encourages  curly 
marriage,  68,  76 

Chastity,  53,  54,  452 

Childbearing,  human  costs  of,  122,  131 

Child  culture,  524,  530,  534,  539,  565; 
nonadaptation  of  the  ordinary  house 
to,  532 

Child  labor,  13,  352,  497;  relation  to 
birth  rate,  90,  91 

Child  mortality,  201,  202,  212,  237 

Children's  Bureau,  4,  195 

Chile,  birth  rate,  204  ;  infant  mortality, 
205  ;  natural  increase,  95 


INDEX 


793 


China,  409,  418  ;  birth  rate,  197  ;  infant 
mortality,  196,  197  ;  population,  196 

Chinese,  41,  331,  335;  boycott,  409; 
exclusion,  7,  385,  404;  women,  512 

Chivalry,  544 

Christian,  Edward,  451 

Christian  Church,  attitude  toward  wo- 
men, 423,  443 ;  population  policy, 
136 

Christian  Science,  348 

Civil  law,  relation  between  husband 
and  wife,  450 

Civil  liberty,  and  population,  69-71 

Class  consciousness,  354 

Class  interest,  331,  332,  488 

Classes,  among  negroes,  679 

Cleft  palate,  151 

Clergymen,  women's  right  to  be,  446 

Cleveland,  Grover,  veto  of  literacy  test, 
372,  403 

Climate,  influence  on  nutrition,  104 

Clothing  manufacture,  immigrants  in, 
293,  294 

Coal  mining,  immigrants  in,  270,  277, 
283-286,  401 

Colonial  Dames,  351,  357 

Colonial  selection,  421 

Color  line,  13-15,  668,  685,  686,  692, 
703.  See  Race  discrimination,  Race 
prejudice 

Colorado  labor  conflict,  352 

Common  law  position  of  women,  437, 
438,  442,  448-452,  464,  465,  492 

Commons,  John  R.,  319 

Company  stores,  279,  311 

Competition,  227;  Asiatic,  411;  immi- 
grant, 278-314;  relation  to  work  of 
women,  496,  499 

Compulsory  marriage,  191 

Compulsory  school  attendance,  185 

Condorcet,  18 

Congenital  cataract,  151 

Conjugal  duty,  refusal  of,  ground  for 
divorce,  596 

Connecticut,  natural  increase  of  popu- 
lation, 95  ;  sterilization  law,  162 

Consanguinity  bar  to  marriage,  590,  591 

Conservatism,  religious,  in  relation  to 
divorce,  643,  644 

Consular  inspection  of  immigrants,  389 

Contagious  disease  ground  for  exclud- 
ing immigrants,  373,  377,  381 

Contract  labor,  252,  253,  331,  388,  389, 
392,  393 ;  certain  kinds  admitted, 
375,  385;  excluded,  374,  376 

Control  stations  for  immigrants,  256 


Coolidge,  Mary  Roberts,  509 

Cooperative  housekeeping,  525,  526 

Corruption,  political,  243 

Corset,  512,  616,  617 

Cost  of  living,  5,  401  ;  for  immigrants, 
276,  277 

Cotton  belt,  the,  13 

Cotton  goods  manufacturing,  immi- 
grants in,  270 ;  labor  organizations 
in,  307-309  ;  married  women  in,  270 

Coverture,  448 

Crackenthorpe,  M.,  1 59 

Creoles,  358,  360 

Crime  and  immigration,  388,  393,  399 ; 
negro,  689-691,  706,  707,  749;  rela- 
tion to  feeble-mindedness,  185,  188 

Criminality,  158,  186,  187,  188,  189; 
hereditary,  155,  157;  sterilization  as 
a  remedy,  162 

Criminals,  exclusion  of,  244,  257,  261 ; 
feeble-mindedness  among,  187,  188  ; 
immigration  of,  244,  257,  261  ;  in 
large  families,  237  ;  negro,  689-691 

Croatians,  283,  286,  303,  304;  wages, 

3r5.  3'6 
Croppers,  13 

Cruelty,  ground  for  divorce,  596 
Curtis,  George  William,  466 
Czechs.   See  Bohemians 

Darwin,  Charles,  124,  136,  142,  643 

Daughters  of  the  American  Revolu- 
tion, 351,  356 

Davenport,  C.  B.  157 

Davies,  Llewelyn,  652 

Deaf-mutism,  151,  160 

Deafness,  158 

Death  rate,  5,  79,  80,  127,  194;  infant, 
methods  of  calculating,  194,  195; 
negro,  748;  relation  to  infant  mortal- 
ity, 207,  216;  and  size  of  family,  226; 
in  the  U.  S.,  396 

Death  registration,  195 

De  Candolle,  Alphonse,  141 

Declaration  of  Independence,  349,  352, 

365>  44i 

Declaration  of  Sentiments,  issued  by 
the  first  woman's  rights  convention, 
441-446 

Decrees,  kinds  of,  in  divorce  cases, 
662,  663 

Degenerate  stocks,  in  New  England, 
353  ;  in  the  South,  353 

Degenerates,  170,  185;  in  large  fam- 
ilies, 237 

De  Lazareff  family,  the,  170 


794 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


Democracy,  3,  9,  118,  227,  248,  331, 
332.  344.  366'  369-  37°,  410,  419,  424, 
469,  470,  471,  472,  496,  510,  580,  596, 
597,  695,  751  ;  as  cause  of  divorce, 
636-639;  of  the  New  South,  687,  688 

Denmark,  birth  rate,  83,  86,  204  ;  infant 
mortality,  205  ;  natural  increase,  95 

Density  of  population,  221  ;  favorable 
to  division  of  labor,  220,  221  ;  in  the 
U.  S.,  221,  223,  224 

Desertion,  ground  for  divorce,  595,  596 

Diabetes  insipidus,  151 

Diarrhea,  epidemic,  cause  of  infant 
mortality,  211,  214,  215 

Dickerman,  George  S.,  678 

Differential  birth  rate.    See  Birth  rate 

Dill,  A.  G.,  726 

Diminishing  returns,  law  of,  i,  25,  98; 
point  of,  passed  in  the  U.  S.,  223 

Disfranchisement,  influence  of,  694, 
695;  of  the  negro,  15;  of  whites, 
697,  698 

Divorce,  10-12,  191,  Book  IV;  a  mensa 
et  thoro,  594,  663 ;  a  vinculo  matrimo- 
nii,  595 ;  Catholic  doctrine  of,  586- 
592,  622;  causes  of,  621-657;  ethics 
of,  Chapter  XIV;  Jewish  law  of,  598  ; 
Protestant  doctrine  of,  593-602,  621 

Divorce  legislation,  443,  621;  need  of 
principles  in,  649-657 ;  proposed  uni- 
form, 657-664 ;  relation  to  divorce 
rate,  623-626 

Domestic  economy,  10,  567,  577  ;  of  the 
immigrant,  277,  280 

Doubleday,  Thomas,  theory  of  popula- 
tion, 105,  106 

Drapers'  Company  Research  Memoirs, 
150 

Dress,  effect  of,  on  character  of  women, 
511-521;  love  of,  in  girls,  430;  re- 
form, 513 

Du  Bois,  W.  E.  B.,  670,  693,  726,  774 

Dugdale,  R.  L.,  155,  183 

Dunbar,  Paul  Laurence,  684 

Dutch,  292;  wages,  315,  316 

Early  childbearing,  evils  of,  103,  104 
Early  marriage,  evils  of,  63,  238 
Eastman,  Max,  466 
Economic     development,    relation     to 

divorce,  628-636 
Economic  struggle,  relation  to  natural 

ability,  168-173 
Eddy,  Mary  Baker,  349 
Edinburgh,  birth  rate,  82,  83 
Education,    75,  91,    550;    in   eugenics, 


147  ;  of  the  feeble-minded,  184,  188; 
influence  of,  on  the  divorce  rate,  640, 
641;  influence  of,  on  talent,  142;  of 
the  negro,  13,  765-784 

Education  of  girls  and  women,  549-577, 
634;  influence  of,  on  fertility,  107; 
strain  of,  545,  563,  570,  571 

Edwards,  Thomas,  722 

Effective  desire  for  offspring,  96-100 

Eliot,  Charles  W.,  403 ;  on  women's 
education,  562-567 

Ellis,  Havelock,  236,  609 

Elmira  Reformatory,  187 

Emancipation  of  women,  a  cause  of 
divorce,  626 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  348,  349 

Emigration  conditions  in  Europe,  243- 
261 

Emotion,  in  men  and  women,  553,  555 

Employment  agents,  342,  384,  393 

Endogamy,  147 

England,  divorce  in,  649,  650 ;  emigra- 
tion from,  258;  lack  of  organization 
for  international  conflict,  144;  legal 
status  of  women,  447  ;  Local  Govern- 
ment Board,  201,  202,  203 

England  and  Wales,  birth  rate,  81,  82, 
83,  85,  86,  87,  92,  204,  654;  child 
mortality,  201,  202,  206 ;  divorce,  649, 
650;  infant  mortality,  201,  202,  203, 
205,  212,  215,  217,  218;  Registrar 
General's  Reports,  202  ;  Royal  Com- 
mission on  Divorce,  649 

English,  283,  284,  285,  286,  292,  294, 
297,  300,  301,  303  ;  wages,  315,  316 

English  language,  ability  to  speak,  250, 
275.  3oo.  336,  337,  34i,  35°'  358,  397. 
39.8 

Environment,  influence  of,  14,  152,  184, 
186,  188,  189,  354,  513,  514,  557,  558; 
on  American  politics,  347  ;  on  infant 
mortality,  206,  207,  212,  215;  on 
women,  433-439,  492,  548 

Epilepsy,  157,  158,  160,  161  ;  in  large 
families,  237 

Epileptics  excluded,  373 

Equal  pay  for  equal  work,  546 

Equal  suffrage.    See  Woman  suffrage 

Erasmus,  597 

Ethical  selection,  129 

Ethnic  consciousness,  356,  357—371 

Ethnic  dualism,  353,  366,  370,  371 

Eugene  IV,  Pope,  587 

Eugenic  certificates,  147 

Eugenic  experiments  not  to  be  hastily 
made,  163 


INDEX 


795 


Eugenic  ideals,  160 

Eugenic  selection,  164,  165 

Eugenics,  4,  135-193,  226,  331,  654; 
applied  —  see  practical;  Committee 
on,  of  the  American  Genetic  Associa- 
tion, 156,  157;  constructive — see  pos- 
itive; definition  (Galton's),  146,  148; 
field  workers,  158;  literature,  136- 
162 ;  movement  in  regard  to,  in 
America,  155-158;  negative,  159,  161; 
positive,  159,  1 60;  practical,  159, 166; 
program  (Galton's),  146,  147  ;  prog- 
ress of,  134-167;  restrictive  —  see 
negative 

Eugenics  Congress,  the  First  Interna- 
tional, 167 

Eugenics  Education  Society,  159,  167 

Eugenics  Record  Office,  4,  155,  157, 
158,  162 

Eugenics    Laboratory    Memoirs,     1 50, 

I5I 

Europe,  birth  rate,  197  ;  emigration 
conditions,  243-261;  infant  mortality, 
197  ;  population,  197 

Euthenist,  184 

Evening  schools,  service  to  immi- 
grants, 344 

Evidence  in  divorce  suits,  662 

Excitability  in  the  feeble-minded,  186 

Exogamy,  147 

Experimental  genetics,  4,  154 

Fairchild,  H.  P.,  387,  395 

Family,  androcentric,  522 ;  disorgani- 
zation of,  n,  521;  as  industrial  group, 
522  ;  origin  of,  521  ;  passing  of  the 
economic  function  of,  631-633  ;  sanc- 
tity of,  580,  592,  593,  599 ;  as  the 
social  unit,  522 ;  unity  of,  587 

Family  pedigrees,  collection  of,  157 

Famine,  19,  28,  37-40,  41,  43,  243,  245 ; 
cause  of  Irish  emigration,  323 

Farm  loans  to  negro  tenants,  terms  of, 
719-722 

Fashion.    See  Dress 

Fecundity  varies  with  age,  103 

Feeble-minded,  the,  excluded,  333,  373  ; 
in  large  families,  237  ;  tools  of  other 
persons,  186 

Feeble-mindedness,  6,  158,  160,  161, 
166;  social  significance  of,  173-193 

Feme  covert,  448 

Feme  sole,  449 

Feminine  charm,  509 

Feminism.    See  woman  movement 

Fertility,  high,  under  what  conditions 


desirable,  100  ;  low  among  the  no- 
bility, 171 

Fertility  rate,  79 

Fetter,  Frank  A.,  219 

Field,  James  A.,  135 

Fifteenth  International  Congress  on 
Hygiene  and  Demography,  195 

Finland,  birth  rate,  204 ;  emigration 
from,  248 ;  infant  mortality,  205 ; 
natural  increase,  95 

Finns,  the,  346 

First-born  children,  237 

Flanders,  increase  of  population,  37 

Florence,  Council  of,  587 

Foodstuffs,  export  of,  222,  242  ;  rising 
cost  of,  222 

Foreign  born,  the,  number  in  the 
United  States,  396,  400 

Forestry,  225 

Formosa,  infant  mortality,  197 

Fouillee,  Alfred,  553 

France,  birth  rate,  82, 83,  87, 88,  91,  204; 
density  of  population,  223;  infant 
mortality,  205 ;  natural  increase,  95, 
107 

Francis  Galton  Laboratory  for  National 
Eugenics,  149,  151,  153,  154;  publica- 
tions of,  150-152 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  on  the  powers  of 
reproduction,  20 

Fraternal  inheritance,  149 

Fraud,  169,  170,  186 

Freedmen's  Bank,  the,  747 

Freedmen's  Bureau,  the,  675 

French,    284,    292,    345,    346;    wages, 

3'5 

French  Canadians,  360;  high  birth  rate 
84,  87,  104,  105,  197;  in  New  England 
textile  mills,  280,  290,  292, 308;  wages, 

3T5-  3i6 

Friendship,  sex  a  bar  to,  602,  603 
Frequency  curves,  149 
Frontier,  the,  disappearance  of,  222 

Gage,  Matilda  Joslyn,  440 

Galicia,  emigration  from,  254 

Galton,  Francis,  137,  138,  140,  141,  142, 

145,  146,  147,  148,  149,  150,  156,  164, 

170 
Galton  Professorship  in  Eugenics,  the, 

ISO 

Garrison,  C.  G.,  611,  615 

Geddes,  Patrick,  553 

Genesis,  defined,  102;  Spencer's  the- 
ory of,  100-107 

Genius,  237,  874 


796 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


Geographical  factors  in  the  race  prob- 
lem, 677-681 

Geological  cycles  in  relation  to  popu- 
lation growth,  115,  116 

Geometrical  ratio  of  population  in- 
crease, 23,  24,  25,  26,  72 

George,  Henry,  on  population,  221 

German  Empire,  birth  rate,  82,  83,  85, 
87;  density  of  population,  223;  nat- 
ural increase,  94,  95 

German  language  required  to  be  taught 
in  certain  public  schools,  335,  362 

German-American  Alliance,  the,  362 

Germans,  283,  285,  286,  292,  293,  294, 
297»  3°°'  3!7.  335'  345.  346,  354,  357, 
360,  361;  position  of  women,  494; 
wages,  315,  316 

Ghettos,  346 

Giddings,  V.  II,  648 

Gilman,  Charlotte  Perkins,  10,  521, 
534.  633 

Gisborne,  Thomas,  424 

Glasgow,  birth  rate,  88 

Glass  manufacturing,  immigrants  in, 
270,  294-297  ;  machinery  in,  296 

Goddard,  H.  H.,  173,  185 

Godey's  Lady's  Book,  519 

Godwin,  William,  18,  47,  123,  124 

Goring,  Charles,  237 

Government,  relation  of,  to  poverty,  62, 
70,  71,  76 

Grandfather  clause,  697 

Great  fortunes,  170 

Greece,  emigration  from,  249,  257;  nat- 
ural increase,  95 

Greeks,  291,  292,  335;  wages,  246,  315 

Greg,  W.  R.,  139,  142,  165 

Gregory,  Dr.,  434 

Guardianship,  443,  447 

Gulick,  Sidney  L.,  409 

Gynecocracy,  486 

Habitual  criminals,  sterilization  of,  162 
Habitual  wandering,  158 
Hridley,  Arthur  T.,  127 
1  hemophilia,  160 

Haiti,  the  negro  in,  705,  706;  slave  in- 
surrection in,  673 
Hale,  Edward  Everett,  672,  675 
Hal!,  Prescott  F.,  419 
Hamburg,  birth  rate,  82,  83 
Hampton  Institute,  682,  782 
Harelip,  151 

Harkness,  Mary  Leal,  567 
Hart,  Albert  Bushnell,  674 
Ilarte,  Bret,  348,  349 


Hawaii,    declining    native   population, 

79.96 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  348 
Haynes,  G.  E.,  727,  742 
Head  tax,  373,  386,  390,  403 
Hebrews,  291,  293,  294,  335,  346,  353, 

354,  357,  358,  360,  361,  363,  364,  525; 

immigration,  6,  248,  258;  wages,  315, 

3i6 
Heredity,  4,  14,  136,  140,  141,  142,  143, 

156,  157,  1 60,  161,  162,  1 66,  183,  184; 

mental,  137,  149,  151,  173,  369,  557, 

559 

Hermaphroditism,  151 

Heron,  David,  237 

Hewlett,  Maurice,  652 

High  schools,  girls  and  boys  in,  467 

Hill  Folk,  the,  155 

Hobhouse,  L.  T.,  610,  614 

Holland,  birth  rate,  204;  density  of  pop- 
ulation, 223;  infant  mortality,  205; 
natural  increase,  95 

Home,  the,  influence  of,  upon  the  fam- 
ily, 521-534;  influence  of  women's 
work  upon,  502,  503;  negro,  685,  686; 
organization  of,  524,  573,  574 ;  pres- 
sure of  modern  life  upon,  629-631 

Home  industries,  relation  of,  to  the 
family,  525 

Hours  of  labor,  246;  effect  of  immigra- 
tion upon,  312,  313 

Howard,  George  Eliot,  593,  610,  612, 
627 

Howells,  William  Dean,  348 

Human  sacrifice,  97 

Humanitarianism,  238;  in  relation  to 
divorce,  645 

Hungarians,  317 

Hungary,  birth  rate,  204;  emigration, 
249,  255;  infant  mortality,  205;  nat- 
ural increase,  95 

Husband  and  wife,  legal  relation  be- 
tween, 448-452,  633 

Huxley,  T.  H.,  163 

Hyde,  William  DeWitt,  671 

Hyphenated  Americans,  359 

Hysteria,  237 

Idiots,  161;  excluded,  373,  377;  women 

classed  with,  460 
Illegitimacy,  173,  190,  191 ;  likely  to  be 

increased  by  restrictions  on  marriage, 

141.  See  Feeble-mindedness,  Kallikak 

family 
Illiteracy,   275,  398,  678,  688;   among 

negroes,  684 


INDEX 


797 


Imagination,  woman's  superior,  426 
Imbeciles,  161, 191 ;  excluded,  373,  377; 

sterilization  laws  applicable  to,  162. 

See  Feeble-mindedness 
Imitation,  190,  349,  358  ;  in  the  lives  of 

women,  510 
Immaturity,  cause  of  infant  mortality, 

21  I 

Immigrant  fund,  373 

Immigrants,  assimilation  of,  7,  273,  274, 
329-371,  386,  387,  388,  389,  397,  413, 
415,  434;  changes  in  bodily  form, 
331  ;  competition  with  native  labor, 
278-314;  conjugal  condition,  276, 
277,  279;  distribution,  7,260,  384,387, 
391,  392,  393,  399,  400;  examination 
of,  379,  389;  and  infant  mortality,  2 1 3, 
214;  necessitous  condition,  275,  276, 
279,  300 ;  rejected,  260,  379 ;  tracta- 
bility,  278,  311 

Immigration,  amount,  262,  396,  397  ; 
causes,  243-260  ;  gross  and  net,  396, 
397,  402  ;  Hindoo,  385,  409 ;  induced 
and  assisted,  87,  248,  251,  252,  257, 
258-260,  374,  376,  388;  industrial  sig- 
nificance, 264-314;  influence  on  na- 
tive birth  rate,  321-328;  manifests 
required,  377,  378,  379 ;  old  and  new, 
268,  269,  275  ;  oriental,  409-418 ;  un- 
restricted, evils  of,  387,  388 

Immigration,  Bureau  of,  249,  250,  415  ; 
Division  of  Information,  381,  382, 

384 

Immigration,  Commissioner  General 
of,  duties  of,  380 

Immigration  Commission,  243,  264,  3 1 6, 
318,  331,  372;  recommendations  of, 
372,  382-386 ;  recommendations  crit- 
icized, 401,  404 

Immigration  legislation,  252,  254,  257, 
258  ;  Act  of  1907,  372,  373~382>  383> 
384;  Act  of  1910,  372,  373;  defects 
of,  392  ;  opposition  to,  402  ;  recom- 
mended, 382-386,  413-416 

Immigration  Restriction  League,  419 

Impedimenta  dirimens,  589,  590 

Impedimenta  impedientia,  589 

Incest,  190 

Incompatibility  of  temper,  ground  for 
divorce,  601 

Incorrigible  criminals,  161.  See  Feeble- 
mindedness 

India,  birth  rate,  197,  198;  infant  mor- 
tality, 196,  197,  198;  population,  196, 
197  ;  physical  weakness  of  women, 
542 


Indiana,  sterilization  of  defectives,  162 

Individualism,  496,  580,  614,  615,  616, 
639  ;  economic,  347,  349 

Individuality,  influence  of  marriage 
upon,  603-609 

Individuation,  defined,  102;  Spencer's 
theory  of,  100-117 

Industrial  communities,  271-274 

Industrial  conditions,  cause  of  declin- 
ing birth  rate,  86 ;  influence  of,  on 
the  race  problem,  687 

Industrial  depression  in  relation  to 
immigration,  245,  249,  250,  277,  278 

Industrial  methods,  influence  of  immi- 
gration upon,  264,  309-311 

Industrial  Revolution,  the,  492 

Industrial  training,  lack  of,  among 
immigrants,  279,  310 

Industrialism  a  cause  of  divorce,  626 

Industry,  growth  of,  in  America,  264- 
269 

Infant  feeding  in  relation  to  infant 
mortality,  207,  215,  216 

Infant  mortality,  4,  5,  92,  132,  194-218; 
American  Association  for  the  Pre- 
vention of,  4,  195;  causes  of,  199- 
218;  decrease  of,  200,  201,  211; 
among  the  foreign  born,  209,  210, 
213,  214,  216;  an  index  to  environ- 
mental conditions,  206 ;  methods  of 
calculating,  194, 195;  among  negroes,  ' 
198  ;  selective  influence  of,  203,  205, 
206 ;  statistics  of,  in  the  world  at 
large,  195-199 

Infanticide,  97,  231 

Infertility,  Doubleday's  theory  of,  104, 

105 

Innocence  as  a  womanly  ideal,  469, 476 

Inquisition,  the,  138 

Insane,  excluded,  373  ;  in  large  fam- 
ilies, 237  ;  sterilization  laws  appli- 
cable to,  162 

Insane  asylums,  feeble-minded  in,  186 

Insanity,  151,  157,  158,  160,  166;  among 
first-born  children,  237 

Instinct,  reproductive,  20,  21,  96,  103 

Instincts  of  society,  Rae's  theory  of, 
98,  99 

Intensive  cultivation,  222,  224,  242 

Inter-Departmental  Committee  on 
Physical  Deterioration,  144,  145,  217 

Intermarriage.    See  Amalgamation 

"  International,"  the,  354 

International  Statistical  Institute,  88 

International  Workers  of  the  World 
(I.W.W.),  352 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


Intuition,  woman's,  468 

Invention,  98,  in,  505;  relation  of,  to 
labor  supply,  224 ;  psychology  of,  559 

Inventiveness,  in  man  and  in  woman, 
556,  559,  560 

Invidious  distinctions,  and  eugenics,  1 65 

Iowa,  sterilization  law,  162 

Ireland,  birth  rate,  82,  83,  86,  87,  204 ; 
emigration  from,  243,  248 ;  infant 
mortality,  205;  natural  increase,  95 

Irish,  the,  280,  283,  285,  286,  290,  292, 
294,  300,  301,  303,  317,  354,  357, 
360,  361,  363;  wages,  315,  316 

Irish  Art  Society,  363 

Irish  history,  required  to  be  taught,  363 

Iron  and  steel  industry,  immigrants  in, 

27°»  313.  3H 

Iron  ore  supply,  225 

Irrigation,  225 

Irritability,  in  the  feeble-minded,  186 

Italians,  283,  284,  291,  292,  293,  294, 
296,  301,  303,  304,  317,  353,  357; 
wages,  315,  316 

Italy,  birth  rate,  83,  87,  204;  density 
of  population,  223,  224 ;  emigration 
from,  249,  256,  261  ;  infant  mortality, 
205;  natural  increase,  95;  wages,  146 

Jaeckel,  R.,  94 

Jamaica,  birth  rate,  204  ;  infant  mortal- 
ity, 205 

James,  C.  L.,  123 

James,  William,  498 

Japan,  409,  410,  411,  416,  778;  birth 
rate,  204 ;  gentlemen's  agreement, 
409,  411  ;  infant  mortality,  205;  nat- 
ural increase,  95 

Japanese,  7,  335;  in  California,  411- 
418 

Japanese  immigration,  385,  404 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  705 

Jesus,  attitude  of,  toward  women,  476; 
views  of,  on  marriage  and  divorce, 
581,  582,  599,  600,  601 

Jewish  Colonization  Association,  259, 
260 

Jewish  Historical  Society,  364 

Jewish  Publication  Society,  364 

Jews.    See  Hebrews 

Jordan,  David  Starr,  155,  156,  157 

Jukes  family,  the,  183,  184,  185,  188 

Juvenile  court,  187 

Kallen,  Horace  M.,  344 
Kallikak  family,  the,  173-193 
Kehilla,  the,  364 


Kelley,  Florence,  497 
Kelsey,  Carl,  713 
Key,  Ellen,  613 
Knibbs,  G.  H.,  195,  196 
Knights  of  Labor,  301 
Know-Nothing  party,  the,  351 
Kohler,  Max  J.,  401 

Labor,  agricultural,  245,  246,  275; 
characteristics  of  immigrant,  274- 
278 ;  decreased  amount  of,  the  only 
cure  for  poverty,  64,  65 ;  migratory, 
277,  278  ;  skilled  and  unskilled,  319- 
321  ;  supply  of,  and  immigration, 
244,  267,  331,  385 

Language,  influence  of,  on  assimilation 
of  the  immigrant,  337-341,  358 

Late  marriage,  Malthus  on  the  desir- 
ability of,  53-55,  74 

Law,  lax  administration  of,  a  cause  of 
divorce,  626 ;  popularization  of,  a 
cause  of  divorce,  626,  639,  640 

Lecky,  W.  E.  H.,  598 

Legalized  prostitution,  some  marriage 
equivalent  to,  68 

Leisure,  conspicuous,  496 

Leo  XIII,  Pope,  encyclical  on  divorce, 
586 

Letters,  immigrants',  248,  249,  250,  253 

Liberalism,  in  relation  to  divorce,  637- 

639 

Lichtenberger,  J.  P.,  621 
Like-mindedness,  344,  345,   346,    353, 

356,  358 

Linton,  Mrs.  Lynn,  603 
Literacy  test,  333,  372,  389,  405-409; 

argument    against,    403 ;     President  ; 

Wilson's  veto,  407-409 
Lithuanians,   284,    286,   292,   293,  303,  • 

304;  wages,  315,  316 
Lombroso,  C.,  556,  709 
London,  birth  rate,  81,  82,  83,  85,  88, 

89,  90,  92,  93,  94 
Loria,  A.,  146,  167 
Lourbet,  Jacques,  555 
Love,  47,  53,  54,  163,  233,  433,  495,  511, 

523,  531,  536,  600,  601,  612,  613,  648 
Lowell,  James  Russell,  348 
Lung  diseases,  cause  of  infant  mortal- 
ity, 2  I  I 
Luther,   Martin,  his    ideal    of   woman, 

475;  views  on  marriage  and  divorce, 

587.  593-598 
Luxury,  influence  on  birth  rate.  90-94, 

235 
Lynching,  690 


INDEX 


799 


Macedonians,  296,  297 

Machinery,  in  relation  to  woman  and 
child  labor,  496-499 

McKim,  W.  D.,  161 

Magyars,  283,  286,  301  ;  wages,  315,  316 

Malthus,  T.  R.,  2,  3,  18,  79,  123,  124, 
125,  127,  128,  129,  130,  168,  219, 
220,  229,  235;  attitude  of  Ameri- 
can writers  toward,  220,  221  ;  crit- 
ics of,  78 

Malthusian  theory,  the,  17-78;  prem- 
ises of,  20,  21 

Malthusianism,  2,  98 

Manual  dexterity,  in  men  and  in  women, 

552 

Manufactures,  growth  of,  265 
Marginal  productivity,  320 
Margueritte,  Paul  and  Victor,  611,  614 
Mark  Twain,  348,  349 
Marriage,  10-12,  50,  51,  54,  58,  190,  523, 

524.  527>  53°'  53L  533.  534,  53°,  542, 
545,  Book  IV ;  annulment  of,  589 ; 
Catholic  doctrine  of,  580,  586-592 ; 
child,  542;  as  contract,  609-620;  He- 
brew law  of,  588  ;  idealistic  views  of, 
581 ;  impediments  to,  588-591 ;  influ- 
ence of,  upon  individuality,  602-609 ; 
late,  228,  229,  530,  531;  nature  of, 
580 ;  not  a  remedy  for  sexual  vice, 
67;  Protestant  doctrine  of,  581,  593- 
602,  610;  rationalistic,  views  of,  581; 
regulation  of,  for  eugenic  purposes, 
147;  restrictive  laws,  161  ;  as  a  sac- 
rament, 609-611;  tyranny  of,  604, 
605;  void  and  voidable,  589 

Marriage  ceremony,  190 

Marriage  laws,  conflict  of,  417;  igno- 
rance of,  611  ;  modification  of,  615 

Marriage  rate,  decline  of,  73,  93,  94 

Marriage  selection,  147,  162,  163,  167, 
170,  171,  172,  173 

Marriage  settlements,  465 

Married  women,  industrial  employment 
of,  in  relation  to  infant  mortality, 
206-211,217,218;  social  precedence 
granted  to,  68 

Married  women  teachers,  discrimina- 
tion against,  539,  540,  546 ;  part-time, 
546 ;  utilized  by  private  schools,  546 

Married  women's  property  acts,  447 

Martineau,  Harriet,  674 

Marx,  Karl,  352 

Massachusetts,  infant  mortality,  201, 
202,  203,  209,  212,  213,  215,  216,  217  ; 
natural  increase,  95  ;  registration  sys- 
tem, 200,  201;  vice  commission,  187 


Maternity.    See  Motherhood 

Matriarchate,  the,  522 

Matthews,  Shailer,  599 

Melting  pot,  the,  344.  See  Amalgamation 

Memory,  in  men  and  women,  553,  555, 

560 

Mendelism,  4,  153,  154,  157 
Mercantilism,  2,  18,  136 
Midwives,  and  infant  mortality,  212,  214 
Militarism,  5 ;  and  population,  3,  57 
Michigan,  natural  increase  of  popula- 
tion, 95  ;  sterilization  law,  162 
Milton,  John,  594,  595,  619 
Minerals,  decreasing  supply  of,  225 
Mill,  John  Stuart,   226,  423,  443,  448, 

452,  549 

Miller,  Kelly,  777 

Minimum  wage,  suggested  basis  for  ad- 
mission of  aliens,  389,  393 

Mining,  development  of,  in  the  United 
States,  265  ;  immigrants  in,  279 

Minnesota,  Scandinavian  culture  in,  362 

Miscegenation,  15,  368 

Misery,    19,   21,   29,   63,   67,    158,   166, 

229,  433 

Missionaries,  influence  of,  in  Hawaii,  97 
Mixter,  C.  W.,  96,  98,  99,  100 
Modernism,  581 
Modesty,  436 ;   effect  of  poverty  upon, 

67  ;  false,  435;  Puritan,  512,  513 
Monogamy,  147,  523 
Monogyny,  523 
Moody,  Loring,  proposed  Institute  of 

Heredity,  156 
Moral  restraint,  19,  29,  43,  44-51,  55, 

56,  59-69,  72,  125-127 
Morals,  double  standard,  443,  445,  475, 

476,  529,  531,  536;  single  standard,  647 
Mores,  1 8 

Morons,  185,  186,  189,  190 
Mortality.  See  Death  rate 
Mortality  records,  lack  of,  in  the  U.  S., 

199 

Mother,  the  postgraduate,  535-548 
Mothers,  state  pensions  for,  131 
Motherhood,  468,  477,  493,   507,    508, 

S22,  S2?,  53°,  542,  546,  574,  5755  en- 
forced, 531,  633;    reaction  of  home 
conditions  upon,  531,  532,  534 
Motor  ability,  in  men  and  women,  552, 

554,  559,  560 

Mott,  Lucretia,  440,  446,  514 
Mulatto,  the,  15,  667,  787,  788,  789 
Murphy,  Edgar  Gardner,  677,  760 
Muscular  strength  in  men  and  women, 


8oo 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


Nam  family,  the,  155 

National  Congress  on  Uniform  Divorce 
Laws,  657 

National  Negro  Business  League,  747 

Nationalism,  Irish,  363 

Natural  resources,  i,  220,  221,  223,  225, 
227 

Natural  rights,  369;  in  relation  to 
women,  444,  445,  484,  485,  492 

Natural  selection,  136,  139,  141,  152, 
161,  163,  164,  227,  238,  420 

Naturalization,  384,  415-417 

Negro,  education  of,  13,  14,  711,  730, 
731,  765-790;  economic  condition, 
691-694,  713-741;  high  death  rate, 
199;  industrial  efficiency,  729-730; 
inferiority,  704-712,  777,  786  ;  move- 
ment of,  toward  the  city,  727,  740; 
ownership  of  property,  692,  693,  740, 
741  ;  standard  of  living,  347,  717-719, 
723-726 

Negro  dietary,  713,  715,  716,  718 

Negro  farmer,  the,  713-726,  730,  732- 

735.  737 

Negro  housing,  717-719 

Negro  suffrage,  666,  674,  675,  694-702, 
708,  740,  755-764 

Neo-Cameralism,  5,  6 

Neo-Malthusianism,  6, 131-134,228-239 

Nevada,  sterilization  law,  162 

New  freedom,  the,  348 

New  nationalism,  the,  348 

New  England,  degenerate  communities 
in,  158;  infant  mortality,  209,  213 

New  Jersey,  sterilization  law,  162 

Newman,  Dr.  George,  200,  2 1 1 ,  2 1 2,  2 1 7 

Newsholme,  Arthur,  80,  201,  205,  212, 
213,  214,  215,  216,  218 

New  South  Wales,  birth  rate,  82,  83, 
86,  204,  234-236 ;  infant  mortality, 
205  ;  natural  increase,  95  ;  Neo-Mal- 
thusianism in,  234—236;  Royal  Com- 
mission on  Decline  of  the  Birth  Rate, 
84,  91,  234 

New  York,  degenerate  communities  in, 
158  ;  married  women's  property  acts, 
447  ;  sterilization  law,  162 

New  Zealand,  birth  rate,  82,  83,  86, 
204 ;  infant  mortality,  205 ;  natural 
increase,  95 

Nobility,  the,  164;  extinction  of,  170 

North  Dakota,  sterilization  law,  162 

Norway,  birth  rate,  82,  83,  86,  87,  204; 
infant  mortality,  203,  205 ;  natural 
increase,  95 

Nurture,  contrasted  with  heredity,  142  / 


Occupations,  of  first  and  second  gener- 
ations of  immigrants,  317-319;  of 
native  born,  282 ;  of  north  European 
immigrants,  270 ;  psychological  in- 
fluence of,  503-506;  women  and, 
483-509,  551 

Odin,  Alfred,  156 

Opportunity,  366,  493,  538,  551;  limited 
by  overpopulation,  228  ;  the  negro's, 
in  the  North,  693,  694 ;  the  negro's, 
in  the  South,  691,  692,  693;  spur  to 
immigration,  249,  332 

Optimism,  347  ;  in  relation  to  the  pop- 
ulation question,  99,  220,  221,  223 

Oregon,  sterilization  law  revoked,  162 

Organized  labor,  attitude  of,  toward  the 
immigrant,  227 ;  attitude  of,  toward  the 
negro,  693,  729,  747  ;  in  coal  mining, 
299-307  ;  effect  of  immigration  upon, 
279,  297-309 

Originality  in  men  and  women,  557, 
56i 

Overcrowding,  5,  6,  239,  243,  333,  402, 

525 
Overfeeding,    Doubleday's   theory   of, 

105,  106 

Overpopulation,  3,  64,  219-228,  229 
Overspeeding,  effect  of,  on  women's 

health,  543,  545 
Owen,  Robert,  126 

Paine,  Thomas,  70 

Pan-Hellenism,  367 

Paralysis,  158 

Parental  instinct,  160,  192 

Parental  responsibility,  3 

Paris,  birth  rate,  82,  83,  86,  88 

Parkman,  Francis,  448,  478 

Parochial  schools,  273,  340 

Particeps  criminis  in  divorce  suits,  662 

Passports,  255,  259,  260,  261,  391,  392, 

393 

Patriarchate,  522 

Patrick,  G.  T.  W.,  554 

Paul,  Saint,  attitude  of,  toward  women, 
476;  views  on  marriage  and  divorce, 
582-586 

Paupers,  139,  184,  185,  188,  399  ;  emi- 
gration of,  257,  258;  exclusion  of, 

373-  388 

Peabody,  F.  G.,  655 
Peace,  2,  5,  227 
Pearson,   Karl,   4,    144,    148,   149,   151. 

152,   154,  212,  237,  556 
Peasantism,  358,  366 
Pensions  for  mothers,  118,  131 


INDEX 


801 


Petty,  Sir  William,  23 

Phelps,  Edward  Bunnell,  194,  195,  199, 
200  . 

Philippine  Islands,  infant  mortality,  198 

Phillips,  Wendell,  676 

Physical  deterioration,  in  England, 
144,  145  ;  Inter-Departmental  Com- 
mittee on,  144,  145 

Pioneer  life,  influence  of,  on  character 
of  women,  514 

Plato,   2,    136;    ideas   of  women,  474, 

476,  55°'  55 ' 
Pneumonia,  cause  of  infant  mortality, 

211 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  348,  349 

Poland,  emigration  from,  248 

Poles,  6,  192,  283,  284,  286,  291,  293, 
295,  296,  297,  301,  304,  317,  337,  340, 
341,  346,  354,  360.  36i,  363;  wages, 
3i5.3i6 

Political  offenses,  not  ground  for  ex- 
clusion, 374 

Political  oppression,  248 

Politics  influenced  by  immigration,  347 

Polydactylism,  151 

Polygamy,  527  ;  ground  for  exclusion, 

373,  374 

Polygyny,  523 

Poor  laws,  128;  encourage  early  mar- 
riage, 68  ;  reform  of,  75 

Population,  density  of,  favorable  to 
division  of  labor,  220,  221  ;  equilib- 
rium of,  with  natural  resources,  347, 
357  ;  natural  increase  of,  5,  79,  80, 
94,  95,  226 ;  positive  check  to,  20,  21, 
26,  28,  30,  230,  233  ;  pre-Malthusian 
views  of,  219,  220;  pressure  of,  2, 
30-32,  35,  220,  227;  rate  of  growth 
of,  in  the  United  States,  226,  321- 
325;  Spencer's  theory  of,  100-117, 
238;  westward  movement  of,  221; 
world's,  196 

Population  policy,  definition  of,  17  ; 
ethics  of,  219-239 

Portuguese,  291,  292;  wages,  315,  316 

Poverty,  causes  of,  19,  59-65,  347  ;  in 
relation  to  the  birth  rate,  87-90,  231, 
233,  531 ;  in  relation  to  infant  mor- 
tality, 213,  214,  215 

Powderly,  T.  V.,  256 

Premature  birth,  a  cause  of  infant  mor- 
tality, 211,  212 

Pressure  of  population,  a  cause  of  prog- 
ress, 117;  diminishing,  77;  relation 
of,  to  individuation,  113 

Prestige,  American,  336,  338 


Prevention    of   conception.     See   Birth 

control 

Preventive  check.  See  Prudential  check 
Primogeniture,  35 
Property  rights,  woman's,  442,  443,  447 

45°'  452 

Prostitutes,  excluded,  372,  374,  375; 
feeble-minded  among,  187,  188  ;  pun- 
ishment for  importing,  375 
.  Prostitution,  28,  121,  185,  186,  187,  188, 
192,  228,  231,  439,  744;  ground  for 
exclusion,  372,  374,  375,  383 

Prudential  check,  3,  19,  27,  29,  30,  43, 

52,  73,  74,  91.  J l8'  I28,  I3r-i34,  228, 
229,  230,  232;  under  socialism,  118- 
123,  124,  125-130 

Prussia,  birth  rate,  83,  86,  87,  91,  204; 
infant  mortality,  205 ;  natural  in- 
crease, 95 

Public  charge,  persons  likely  to  be- 
come, excluded,  373 

Public  Health  and  Marine  Hospital 
Service,  379 

Public  libraries,  service  of,  to  the  immi- 
grant, 341,  344 

Public  opinion  in  the  race  question,  688 

Public  sanitation,  effect  of,  on  infant 
mortality  rate,  200 

Public  schools,  assimilative  factor,  355, 

358 
Puritanism,  348,  511,  512,  614,  619,  644 

Quasi-desertion,  596 
Queensland,  birth  rate,  204  ;  infant  mor- 
tality, 205 ;  natural  increase,  95 

Race  in  relation  to  the  birth  rate,  86 
Race  discrimination,  695,  728,  729,  731, 

732,  738>  739-  742-764 
Race  instinct,  787 
Race  prejudice,  14,  280,  28  r,  331,  335, 

353,  409-418,  669,  685,  688,  728,  729, 

752-755,  784 
Race  segregation,  703  ;    geographical, 

677,  678 
Race   suicide,   6,   90-94,  96,   131,  226, 

237,    239.     See   Birth    control,    Neo- 

Malthusianism 
Racial  displacements  in  industry,  281- 

297 

Rae,  John,  79,  96 

Reconstruction  era,  the,  12,  708;  psy- 
chological influences  of,  665-676 

Reformation,  the,  in  relation  to  mar- 
riage and  divorce,  n,  18,  593,  609, 
610 


802 


READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


Registration  area,  199 
Registration  laws,  4,  5 
Religion,  and  population  policy,  18; 

bbr  to  assimilation,  358,  359,  360,  361 ; 

influence  of,  on  the  birth  rate,  86,  87, 

91,  235  ;  to  sanction  eugenics,  143, 

145,  147,  148 
Religious   faith,  in   men  and   women, 

555 

Religious  oppression,  243,  248,  346 
Religious  rites,  need  of  males  for,  18 
Rentoul's  operation.    See  Vasectomy 
Right  to  subsistence,  denied  by  Mal- 

thus,  70,  71 

Right  to  work,  76 ;  woman's,  9 
Riis,  Jacob  A.,  350,  351 
Roman  law,  n,  494,  597,  612,  619 
Ross,  Edward  Alsworth,  196,  197,  345, 

353.  358,  360.  366,  368 

Roumania,  birth  rate,  204 ;  emigration 
from,  248,  258,  259;  infant  mortality, 
205 ;  natural  increase,  95 

Roumanians,  283;  wages,  315 

Rousseau,  J.  J.,  428,  489,  490  ;  views  on 
women,  428-433,  434,  435,  475 

Royal  Commission  on  Divorce  and 
Matrimonial  Causes,  649 

Royal  Commission  on  Physical  Train- 
ing, 144 

Royce,  Josiah,  404,  559 

Rubinow,  I.  M.,  635 

Russia,  birth  rate,  197,  204;  emigra- 
tion from,  245,  248,  255,  258;  infant 
mortality,  197,  205;  natural  increase, 
95;  population,  197;  position  of 
women,  495;  wages,  246 

Russians,  283,  286,  291,  292,  295,  296, 
297,  317;  wages,  315 

Ruthenians,  283;  wages,  315,  316 

St.  John,  Sir  Spencer,  706 

San  Domingo,  the  negro  in,  706 

Sanitation  in  factories,  in   relation  to 

infant  mortality,  218 
Saxony,  birth  rate,  82,  83,  86;  natural 

increase,  95 
Scalawags,  674,  676 
Scandinavian  Society  of  America,  362 
Scandinavians,  357,  361,  362 
Schools,  feminization  of,  536 
Schurman,  J.  G.,  403 
Schurz,  Carl,  403 
Scientists,  eminence  among,  141 
Scotch,  the,  283,  284,  285,  286,  292,  300, 

303;  wages,  315,  316 
Scotland,  birth  rate,  83,  86,  87,   204  ; 


infant  mortality,  205 ;  natural  in- 
crease, 95 

Segregation,  of  the  immigrant,  272, 
275'  3".  334-337.  346;  of  the  negro, 
742-764 

Selection,  colonial,  421  ;  marriage,  147, 
162,  163,  167,  170,  171,  172,  173; 
natural,  136,  139,  141,  152,  161,  163, 
164,  227,  238,  420 

Self-control,  lack  of,  in  the  feeble- 
minded, 186,  190-192 

Sensibility   in   men   and  women,   552, 

553.  555 

Servant  question,  528,  530,  603 

Servia,  birth  rate,  204 ;  infant  mortal- 
ity, 205;  natural  increase,  95 

Servians,  283;  wages,  315 

Settlements,    service    to    immigrants, 

344.  355 

Sex,  a  bar  to  friendship,  602 

Sex  combat,  instinct  of,  523 

Sex  differences,  424-433,  467,  468, 479, 
535.  549.  550.  55L  552-562 !  biologi- 
cal theory  of,  553-557 

Sex  immorality  among  feeble-minded, 

1 73-1 7  5.  l83>  19° 

Sex  passion,  Malthus  on,  46-51 ;  modi- 
fiable by  reason,  61 

Sexes,  equality  of,  444,  445  ;  mutual 
interests  of,  458,  459,  468,  469 ;  vari- 
ability of,  535,  556,  557 

Sexual  perversion,  190 

Sexual  selection,  356 

Shaler,  N.  S.,  693 

Sicily,  emigration  from,  249 ;  standard 
of  living  in,  224 

Simon,  Sir  John,  on  the  causes  of  in- 
fant mortality,  207,  217 

Slavery,  12,  227,  777, 782  ;  influence  on 
the  negro,  683  ;  race  relations  under, 
666-669 

Slavs,  330-344,  346,  353,  357.  360 

Slovaks,  283,  286,  295,  296,  297,  301  ; 
wages,  315,  316 

Slovenians,  286;  wages,  315,  316 

Snow,  E.  C.,  212 

Social  classes,  birth  rate  in  different  — 
see  Birth  rate,  differential;  Galton's 
idea  of,  140,  160;  relation  to  natural 
ability,  167-173 

Social  consciousness,  as  guide  to  eu- 
genic ideals,  1 63 ;  in  men  and  women, 

Social  equality,  influence  of,  on  popula- 
tion, 1 19 
Social  heredity,  190 


INDEX 


803 


Social  philosophy,  eugenics  needs,  163 
Social  suicide,  90-94 
Socialism,    19,  362,  654 ;    and  popula- 
tion, 118-134 

Society  life,  effect  on  women,  509-511 

Sociological  Society,  the,  145,  146,  147 

South  Australia,  birth  rate,  204 ;  infant 

mortality,  203,  205  ;  natural  increase, 

95 

South  Carolina,  no  divorce  permitted, 
11,  621,  624 

Spain,  birth  rate,  204  ;  infant  mortality, 
205 ;  natural  increase,  95 

Spencer,  Anna  Garlin,  535 

Spencer,  Herbert,  79,  100,  643 

Split-foot,  151 

Standard  fertility  rate,  71 

Standard  of  living,  8,  195,  247,  501  ; 
effect  of,  on  population  growth,  27, 
41,  60,  61,  73,  90-94,  131  ;  of  the 
negro,  347,  717-719,  723-726;  in  re- 
lation to  divorce,  628-631;  in  relation 
to  immigration,  243,  244,  247,276,279, 
311,  326-328,  331,342,  343,  382,  386, 
388,  395,  401 

Stanton,  Elizabeth  Cady,  440 

Steamship  companies,  7,  254,  346,  419  ; 
distribution  of  emigrant  traffic  among, 
255;  forbidden  to  encourage  immi- 
gration, 376;  penalties  for  encourag- 
ing immigration,  377,  379 

Steerage,  383 ;  abolition  of,  recom- 
mended, 333 

Steiner,  E.  A.,  350,  351 

Sterilization  of  defectives,  161,  162,416 

Stevens,  E.  Ray,  623,  624 

Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  79 

Stevenson,  T.  II.  C.,  So 

Still  births,  a  factor  in  infant  mortality, 
2 13 

Stone,  Alfred  Holt,  665 

Strikes,  278,  300,  301.  302.  308 

Stuart,  Sir  James,  34 

Suffrage,  limitation  of,  in  the  South, 
697,  698,  701  ;  not  a  natural  right. 
453.  See  Woman  suffrage 

Sumner,  W.  G.,  632 

Survival  of  the  fittest.  139,  164,  420 

Sweden,  birth  rate,  82,  83,  86,  204  ;  in- 
fant mortality,  205;  natural  increase. 

95 

Swedes.  292.  294,  33^  ;  wages.  315,  316 
Switzerland,  birth  rate.  204  ;  density  of 

population,     223  ;     infant    mortality, 

205  :    natural  increase,  95 
Syphilis,  158 


Syria,  emigration  from,  250 

Syrians,  283,  291,  292  ;  wages,  315,  316 

Taboos,  147,  524 

Taft,  William  Howard,  veto  of  literacy 
test,  373 

Tanner,  Benjamin  T.,  684 

Tasmania,  birth  rate,  204;  infant  mor- 
tality, 203-205;  natural  increase,  95 

Taxation,  high,  a  cause  of  emigration. 
245;  to  support  the  poor,  229;  with- 
out representation,  443,  452,  454 

Teachers,  Northern,  in  negro  schools. 
676 

Temperament,  hereditary.  189,  190 

Tenancy,  negro.    See  Negro  farmer 

Texas,  347;  child  labor,  13;  segregation 
of  immigrant  races,  335 

Thomas,  W.  I.,  493 

Thompson,  Helen  B.,  552 

Thompson,  J.  Arthur,  541,  553 

Thompson,  William,  118 

Thresholds  in  men  and  women.  552 

Trade  unions.    See  Organized  labor 

Transylvania,  emigration  from,  250 

Trent,  Council  of,  581,  587 

Tuberculosis,  151,  158,  166;  a  cause  for 
exclusion,  373,  377;  in  the  first-born, 
237;  in  large  families,  237 

Turkey,  emigration  from,  248,  249; 
wages,  246 

Turks,  291,  292 

Tuskegee  Institute,  682,  715.  772,  782 

Unemployment,  347 

Unhappy   marriages,   cause   of,    11,    12. 

68,  69 

Uniform  Divorce  Laws.  National  Con- 
gress on.  657 

Unit  character,  153,  154,  155,  160 
United  Mine  Workers  of  America,  ^01 
Unity,   American,  333;  defective,  3^8. 

359 
Unskilled    laborers,   exclusion   of,   386, 

390,  394.  403 
Urbanization,  a  cause  of  declining  birth 

rate,  84,  85.  131 

Yardaman,  James  K..  704 
Variability  in  men  and  women.  535 
Vasectomy.  161 
Venereal  disease,  707 
Vermont,  natural  increase,  95 
Vice,  12,  28,  33.  34,  231.  594;   distribu- 
tion   between    the    sexes,    426,   476; 
among    Hawaiian    natives.    97  :     not 


804 


READINGS  L\T  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


increased  by  advocating  moral  re- 
straint, 66,  67,  231 

Victoria,  birth  rate,  82,  83,  204;  infant 
mortality,  205;  natural  increase,  95 

Vienna,  birth  rate,  88 

Violence,  169,  278,  301 

Viriculture,  140,  143 

Vision,  congenital  defects  of,  160 

Vocational  guidance  needed  for  girls, 

545-  55° 

Vocational  training,  355 
Volitional  check.    See  Prudential  check 
Volta  Bureau,  i  55 

Wage  earners,  foreign  born,  267,  26S 
Wages,  30,  33,  52,  61,  62,  64,  65,  222, 
223,  225,  227,  232,  243,  244,  245,  315. 
316,  319,  528;  of  immigrant  races, 
315,  316,  319;  influence  of  immigra- 
tion, 268,  313;  relative,  in  the  United 
States,  France,  Germany,  and  Great 
Britain,  245,  246;  of  working  women, 

499 

Wakefield,  Gibbon,  421 
Walker,  Daniel,  684 
Walker,  Francis  A.,  321 
War,  2,  19,  43,  57,  97,  98,  141,  144 
Ward,  Lester  F.,  156 
Warner,  Amos,  155 
Washington,   Booker  T.,  224,  684,  6:)i, 

692,  765,  769.  779 
Washington,  sterilization  law,  iC>2 
Watson,  Klkanah,  323,  324,  3:5 
Webb.  Sidney,  131,  236 
Webster,  Augusta,  602 
Wells,  II.  G.,  1 60,  363,  364 
Welsh,    the,    283,    284,    285,    286,    303, 

315 
West  Australia,  birth  rate,  204  ;   infant 

mortality.  205;   natural  increase,  95 
Whitman,  Walt.  348,  349 
Willcox,  Walter  F.,  395,  625,  626,  639 
Wilson,   Woodrow,   359,   412;    veto    of 

literacy  test,  373,  407-409 
Winship,  K.  A.,  184 
Wisconsin,  German  culture  in.  362.  363; 

socialism    in,    362;    sterilization    law. 

162 

Wollstonecraft,  Mary,  423,  428,  433 
Woman,  aesthetic  function  of,  566,  567; 

civic  duties  of  437.  438;   contractual 

capacity    of.    448,    492  ;     created    to 

please  man,  430, 475;  denied  benefit  of 


clergy,  451;  denied  vocational  oppor- 
tunity, 443,  464;  dependence  of,  438, 
439,  499,  500,  516;  dissipation  of  en- 
ergies, 571,  572;  economic  depend- 
ence, 528-534;  economic  independ- 
ence, 121,  123,  633-636;  education, 
107,  428-439,  443,  461,  496,  545,  549- 
577;  effect  of  society  life  upon,  509- 
511;  eighteenth-century  ideal  of,  423- 
446;  exploitation  of,  496-500,  531; 
ignorance  of,  434,  436,  445;  indirect 
influence  of,  433,  461;  influence  of 
dress  upon,  51 1-521 ;  intellectual  ca- 
pacity, 432,  550;  isolation  of,  526; 
lack  of  self-confidence,  443;  legal 
and  political  status  of,  447-491  ;  mo- 
rality of,  436;  need  of  appreciation, 
5 1  7;  number  gainfully  employed,  402 ; 
owes  obedience  to  husband,  431,  443; 
ownership  of,  526-528,  531,  533;  pas- 
sivity of,  429,  476;  position  under 
the  common  law,  437,  438,  442;  prop- 
erty rights,  442,  443,  464,  465.  492; 
social  work  for,  547;  vocations  for, 
439,  446,  564,  565 

Woman  movement,  the,  3,  S-io,  Book 
III 

Woman  problem,  Book  III 

Woman  service,  522,  527,  528,  533.  See 
Woman,  exploitation  of 

Woman  suffrage,  438,  442,  445.  446,  447. 
448,  452-49'.  49--  493 

Woman's  Rights  Convention,  First,  440 

Women  in  industry,  9,  286-290,  311, 
470,  471.  492,  543-545.  629.  630 

Women  voters,  number  in  the  United 
States,  490 

Women's  colleges,  563 

Women's  manual  work,  influence  of, 
upon  fertility,  106 

Women's  rights,  early  movement  for. 
^423.  44.7,  513 

Working  conditions  as  affected  by  im- 
migration, 270,  282.  309-312 

Wright,  Martha  C.,  440 

Wyandots,  position  of  women  among. 
494 

Yellow  journalism.  361 
Yellow  peril,  v  409.  410.  418 

Zangwill.  Israel.  350,  351 
/wingli,  5117 


Date  Due 


EGIONAL  LIBRARY   ACILITY 


«AP 


• 


8EC  r  |  -59 


347058    8 


Library  Bureau  Cat.  No.  1137 


I 


Oil!  il 


